The Election SOS newsletter is a dedicated resource for journalists covering the 2020 election. We provide critical resources to help with your coverage, safety and service.
Thank you!
First, we'd love to thank all the newsrooms, reporters, editors, and journalists who have worked so tirelessly and continue to do so this election season! We hope you had a chance to take some time to reset and regroup this weekend. It's not over.
Starting this week, we are going back to our regular weekly newsletter schedule and will continue supporting your coverage with relevant tools and resources. We'd love to know what support you are looking for from us in the coming months? Please use our suggestion box to let us know what tools, information and resources you need.
Election SOS believes in asking questions to shift power from politicians to the public. We urge you to invite curiosity in your coverage in efforts to build a healthy dialogue among the public, like Penny Riordan, who is opening this conversation on Twitter. This week take time to listen to your communities, foster meaningful conversations and use the following Election SOS resources to help:
Newsrooms have the responsibility to meaningfully listen and respond to the communities they aim to serve, so the public can fully participate in the democratic process. Use this checklist at each stage of the reporting process to evaluate how well your election coverage puts the need of your audiences first.
Watch this workshop led by Nisha Chittal, Director of Audience + Engagement at VOX, to learn how to use relevant tools and platforms to monitor audience conversations and trends and best practices for curating and sharing your findings.
This webinar led by Joy Mayer and Lynn Walsh of Trusting News, offers advice on how to find out what your readers and viewers are talking about and what to do with the information you've gathered.
Rapid Response Fund
If you missed our grant announcement last week, but have emergent election needs, we encourage you to apply.
Verifying Election Outcomes: Post-Election Audits - API
Our friends at the American Press Institute are hosting a workshop about post-election audits and what journalists should know to cover audits effectively in support of public confidence about the election results. Ben Adida, the Executive Director of VotingWorks, and Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor to Democracy Fund and a former Maricopa County election official, will offer their expertise that can help journalists inform the public about how states canvass and verify election results.
Mail voting has been around in some form since the Civil War, but this election is many Americans’ first introduction. Accordingly, hearing stories about some mail ballots being discarded for signature mismatches or other voter errors might be disconcerting. Thankfully, many states have a little-known procedure—called ballot curing—in place that allows eligible voters to fix problems on their mail ballot and make sure their voice is heard. The deadline for vote curing for Arizona and Nevada is this Tuesday, and North Carolina - this Thursday.
The Crisis of American Democracy Is Not Over - The Atlantic Blinded by their contempt for Hillary Clinton, much of the 2016 electorate failed to see the danger Trump posed to popular sovereignty. Since taking office, the president has used the levers of government to enrich himself and his allies; purge those who resisted his schemes; turn the powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies against his enemies and apply those powers to benefit his co-conspirators; socially engineer a whiter America in order to preserve the nation’s traditional aristocracy of race; and attempt to destroy the ability of the United States to hold free and fair elections. Even now, he calls for the results to be altered in his favor—a call that the majority of his supporters have refused. But just enough of them have embraced it to remind everyone of the stakes.
Have you heard of the Safe Harbor deadline? Learn about key federal dates coming up before inauguration to inform your election reporting in the coming months.
Terri Harel, Executive Director at OnlineSOS, discusses online harassment experience and strategies for protection, response and recovery. If you or your colleagues are dealing with online trolls, watch this webinar to get resources for further support.
Online harassment constitutes the single largest threat to American journalists, per a study from CPJ, and has real consequences such as self-censoring behavior. Read more key takeaways from the Election SOS workshop with Viktorya Vilk, Program Director for Digital Safety and Free Expression at PEN America.
The polls have closed, but the electoral process is still underway. This roundup will help you cover election litigation and mitigate misinformation with integrity and confidence.
Election SOS Fellows Reporting Highlights:
Thanks to generous support from our funders, we've matched 39 fellows to support 20 newsrooms in battleground states. Check out the great work they're doing.
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