US elections: the best of the rest on the web
For those that have been under a rock/on Mars for the last year, the next President of the United States will be decided tonight, giving news organisations another opportunity to flaunt their interactive, live reporting and user-generated wares as the votes unfold.
We’ve already covered Sky News’ election coverage and BBC News’ live online plans, but here’s our round-up of some of the best projects out there - open up twenty browser tabs, sit back and enjoy:
- NYTimes.com: the paper has set up a political ‘word train’ visualising how readers are feeling. It’ll update with new answers every 30 minutes (thanks to @matthewbuckland for the link). Elsewhere the site’s homepage is dominated by election coverage, with plenty of images and video - making use of the new video player - and a pop-up results widget.
- Twitter Vote Report: the microblogging tool has been harnessed by a network of volunteers to map voters’ experiences at the polls. Tweets tagged with waiting times (e.g. #wait 120 for a 120 minute delay) are plotted creating a rapidly updating map of problems. Could be a great service for local newspapers in the states to provide:
- Current: using Twitter, as it did during the presidential debates, the site and channel will integrate Tweets, Digg headlines and video from 12seconds as part of an election broadcast.
- WashingtonPost.com: the paper has gone for an aggregated approach, pulling together all strands of its election day coverage on a map. The TimeSpace: Election graphic shows photos, video, articles, tweets, posts and audio and lets you scroll through the day with a timeline:
- Yahoo: created a one-stop shop, US election microsite drawing together all of its features, including forums, Yahoo Answers, AP and Politico stories and aggregated content from external news sites, a Flickr stream of photos and options to set up news alerts on the candidates.
- Hubdub: the just-for-fun news prediction site is carrying an election forecast map, which it claims is based on ‘51 underlying prediction markets that respond in real-time to breaking news’. Users can view forecasts state-by-state to help them decided where to place their Hubdub dollars when predicting the outcome of questions such as ‘Who will win the 2008 US Presidential Election?’ and ‘What will be the margin of victory in the state of Ohio?’
That’s not enough, I hear you cry. You want more? Well, over at paidContent:UK, Robert Andrews has wrapped up the online coverage from the UK’s newspapers, while Online Journalism Blog chieftain Paul Bradshaw has an extensive list of online activities.
This is only the tip of the iceberg - any other great coverage, tools or websites that need a mention, let us know below.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
[...] Wu’s list gives good detail on what the American newspapers and channels are doing. Journalism.co.uk are in on the act with a good round up of webby coverage. The ever-present Paul Bradshaw considers [...]
November 4th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
[...] reviewing the best online coverage of election day, CNN’s press office dropped us a line about the ‘magic board’ - a map of the [...]
November 4th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Press release from the NYTimes also points out video coverage giving access all areas to newsroom:
“Beginning at 7pm [(EST)] and continuing every 30 minutes throughout the night, political correspondents will deliver video reports from the newsroom, giving viewers a look inside the newsroom on an election night for the first time. These videos will be prominently displayed on the NYTimes.com homepage.”
November 4th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
And one more for the road… MSN UK’s video created by its two political editors explaining the whole election and voting process - http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-gb&vid=63e5725a-cfa4-4f85-8372-f139abc71419&from=ENGB_msnvideo&tab=s1190634400496
November 4th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
[...] US elections: the best of the rest on the web [...]
November 5th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
[...] US Elections: The Best of the Rest of the Web [...]
November 5th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
[...] pas faire le coup d’être le Xième à apporter une analyse sur ce sujet (ici, ici ou encore là ) mais juste vous faire part de ce qui a retenu mon [...]