How to successfully cover an election with live blogs?
Dagens Næringsliv used Live Center to live blog the 2017 election results
On September 11th, 2017 Norway held its national parliamentary election to elect the political parties which would form the “Storting” for the next four years. Dagens Næringsliv (DN), one of Norway’s largest and most influential news outlets, organized a large-scale live blogging coverage of the vote count to provide their readers with a continuous feed of the election results and updates.
DN’s 2017 Parliamentary Election portal auto-translated from Norwegian to English
Live blogging collaboration – How DN covered the election
To cover the high-paced evening, DN organized their editorial staff both inside and outside the newsroom for real time reporting. Journalists were staffed both at DN’s central office in Oslo, and at the various locations throughout the capital.
From the field, journalists wrote live blog posts from their cellphones about how different parties, party leaders, and voters followed and reacted to the tallying. These posts were published in the same blog channels which were also used by the news desk journalists at DN. This allowed a seamless collaboration where text, video, and images could be created in the field which was then added to, and enhanced by, the journalists at the news desk.
Two live election blogs, different focus and design
DN created two live election blogs with different areas of focus and post frequency: the main blog covered key developments and announcements of the election count which was used by many different journalists at the same time. In total, over 90 posts where published in real-time through the evening.
The other live blog was covered by Kjetil B. Alstadheim, political editor at DN, where he covered and analyzed the election from the field.
These two blogs allowed both a broader live feed of news through the main blog, and more personalized posts through Kjetil’s blog. Additionally, the two blogs had widely different designs and layouts, both feeling integrated with DN’s overall website, but with their own touch which enhanced the focus and communication of the blogs.
Custom Extensions
To enhance reader engagement in the live blog, DN created their own custom post visual that took less than 1 hour to take from idea to a finished visual. The Extension allowed DN to provide snapshots of the counted votes throughout the evening while creating a more visual feel of the blog.
Custom Blog post visual created by DNauto-translated from Norwegian to English
Extensions are easily created thanks to Live Center’s flexible technology which allows any customer to create their own visuals such as charts, tables, or graphs and embed these into blog posts.
Positioned DN at the front of Live Election blogging in Norway
The election blogs allowed DN to bring the latest news, analysis, and updates in real-time to their readers from the early evening, to late into the night. Through collaboration between field and news desk journalists, DN published crisp and engaging journalism which cemented their role as the leading financial newspaper in Norway.
Proved the intuitive functionality of Live Center
The election coverage also proved Live Center as a robust enterprise scale live blogging software. Being both intuitive enough to allow journalists to publish directly from the field through their cellphones, and technologically advanced enough to support the high number or journalist and concurrent reader, Live Center was an invaluable live blogging tool for DN.
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