Tag Archives: elections

Journalisted Weekly: Hodgson, elections and a select committee

Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

 

Hodgson, elections and a select committee

For the week ending Sunday 6 May:

  • Roy Hodgson named England manager
  • Local elections in Britain, presidential elections in France and a Commons select committee were covered lots
  • Russia warns US, fighting in Congo, explosion in Russia and passing of Protection of Freedoms Bill covered little

Hacked Off is reporting live from the Leveson inquiry again this week via twitter @hackinginquiry and hackinginquiry.orgThe Orwell Prize awards ceremony is on May 23rd. All welcome, email katriona.lewis@mediastandardstrust.org to reserve your free placeFor the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbeCovered Lots

Covered Little

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs Serious

Eurozone leaders (top ten by number of articles)

Who wrote a lot about…the Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee

Long form journalism

Hacked Off is reporting live from the Leveson inquiry again this week via twitter @hackinginquiry and hackinginquiry.org

The Orwell Prize awards ceremony is on May 23rd. All welcome, email katriona.lewis@mediastandardstrust.org to reserve your free place

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

Journalisted Weekly: Bin Laden, wedding hangover, & Scottish election

Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about.

It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations.

Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

For the week ending Sunday 8 May

  • Bin Laden’s death pushed royal wedding out of the headlines
  • AV, Scottish and Welsh elections dominated political news
  • A mass grave in Ivory Coast and rising African affluence, covered little

Covered lots

  • Osama bin Laden, found and shot dead in Pakistan by the Americans almost 10 years after 9/11, 1,329 articles
  • The Royal Wedding, including comment on wedding highlights and honeymoon destinations, 590 articles
  • The AV referendum goes to the polls and loses the vote, while the Lib Dems suffer most in the local elections, 465 articles
  • The Scottish parliament election, with the SNP winning a second term on an overall majority, 258 articles

Covered little

  • The neighbour of Joanna Yeates, Vincent Tabak, pleads guilty to her manslaughter but faces trial for murder, 21 articles
  • The last known WW1 veteran, Claude Stanley Choules, dies aged 110, 15 articles
  • Ahmadinejad’s allies accused of sorcery, amid a power struggle between him and Ayatollah Khamenei, 6 articles
  • A mass grave is uncovered in Ivory Coast, one of several found since political unrest gripped the country after last year’s disputed election, 3 articles
  • A study by the African Development Bank reports 1/3 of Africans are now middle class, 2 articles

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

David Cameron: 737 articles (+135% on previous week)

Celebrity vs serious

Arab spring

Who wrote a lot about…’Osama Bin Laden’

Toby Harnden – 14 articles (Telegraph), Farhan Bokhari – 12 articles (Financial Times), James Lamont – 12 articles (Financial Times), Declan Walsh – 12 articles (The Guardian), Ewen MacAskill – 10 articles (The Guardian), Jason Burke – 10 articles (The Guardian), Padraic Flanagan – 9 articles (Daily Express), Rob Crilly – 9 articles (Telegraph, The Scotsman), Catherine Philp – 8 articles (The Times)

Long form journalism

4,084 words: Tunisia: after the revolutionRoula Khalaf, Financial Times, 6 May 2011
3,994 words: Osama bin Laden obituaryLawrence Joffe and Jason Burke, The Guardian, 2 May 2011
2,941 words: Morgellons: A hidden epidemic or mass hysteria? – Will Storr, The Guardian, 7 May 2011

More from the Media Standards Trust

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s new site Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Churnalism.com ‘explore’ page is available for browsing press release sources alongside news outlets

The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

#ge2010: How to follow election day online

As live events go, election night has to be one of the biggest opportunities for journalists and news organisations to get tweeting, liveblogging, mapping and more. Here’s our guide to the best online coverage of election day and plans for tonight’s results, as we look at what journalists’ can learn for future live events and how readers (and voters) are being kept informed:

Produced in associated with Channel 4 and the New Statesman, Guardian.co.uk’s election coverage features a map plotting voter turnout. It’s reliant on people tweeting when they’ve voted with the first half of their postcode and the #ukvote hashtag, but gives a good real-time picture of where the votes are coming in from.

The goal of the experiment is to inspire more people to vote and to help get a sense of turnout during the course of the day and across the country. Channel 4 News is also trying to gauge turnout using a poll as part of its election day liveblog, which dominates its homepage today.

The Guardian has also changed the layout of its homepage to incorporate more election coverage – particularly like the way it highlights the latest updates from its election day liveblog as part of the top stories box.

Ahead of tonight’s results the Telegraph has a handy guide to when constituencies will be declaring and which party is targeting which seats.

The BBC has its live page up and ready for tonight and is promising to use all its multimedia resources to boost its online coverage, with a liveblog of the results for those following online and on mobile and streams of the best radio and TV footage from the BBC via the website. Particularly nice is the slideshow of how to vote – the practicalities not which party to vote for and the option to download an election night party pack.

As part of extensive election night coverage online, Sky News has a handy, hour-by-hour guide of what happens on election day and has Facebook chat around the election added to its liveblog, so users can post status updates from the Sky site.

The Financial Times is hosting an election special on its Westminster blog for election day; while the Times’ group blog Election ’10 is worth a mention for today’s blow-by-blow coverage and its offering of analysis, news and commentary throughout the election campaigns, balancing live and need-to-know with deeper commentary.

The Liverpool Daily Post has an excellent election section and its election map that will show the results for its local seats as they come in is a great feature. This set-up is being used by other Trinity Mirror titles too, including the Birmingham Post and Mail titles, which have also adopted the group blog Party Central for local politicians set up by the Liverpool Post & Echo:

The hyperlocal election:

We’ve written about the opportunities for hyperlocal, independent news sites in covering the general election and its seems tonight will be no exception. Expect liveblogs – Sunderland blog SR2 Blog is hoping to be one of the first sites to report a results, while Blog Preston has recruited student bloggers for the task; and live tweeting – new site for Manchester Inside the M60 will be tweeting the results live and posting them to the site as soon as they come in. Let us know if you’re planning something special for tonight or trying out some live reporting for the first time in the comments below.

Non-news sites:

Tweetminster gives an unrivalled view of tweeting going on during election day, filtering tweets from politicians and prospective parliamentary candidates, as well as mapping voter turnout by tweet and trending topics.

Facebook has set up a live vote count showing how many Facebook users have said they’ve voted, as well as pulling in news updates from external sites and polling users on its Democracy UK page.


And finally, if just for fun, a picture of how tweeters are aligned by party from @jaygooby.

If you’re a journalist, blogger or just an interested party let us know how you’re reporting and following election night as it happens.

US elections: CNN’s ‘magic map’ gets spoofed on Saturday Night Live

While reviewing the best online coverage of election day, CNN’s press office dropped us a line about the ‘magic board’ – a map of the states which will be used by presenter John King to show the results and forecasts as they come in.

For anyone who loves/loathes a good swing-o-meter, here’s Saturday Night Live’s take on it: