We would go to the polls, and hurry home by 8 p.m. to gather around the TV to watch the national networks collect and report the results. It might be several more hours before the winner was sure. The next morning, we would dive into the newspaper to read all about it.
That was election coverage.
Fast forward to November 4th, 2008. At KGW-TV here in Portland, NBC called the presidential race for Obama the second the west-coast polls closed, at 8:00 pm on the dot. But the speed of reporting wasn't the biggest change.
Our election coverage included an unprecedented depth and diversity of content made available on every conceivable platform:
- 'Mainstream' new media content, like constantly updated text stories and videos, and real-time election results on kgw.com
- Breaking news emails pushed to subcribers alerting them to the results
- Continuous "tweets" on the KGW Twitter feed, reporting local race results as they came in
- Stories and election results updated in real time and available on the go on mobile phones via kgw.com/mobile
- Live blogging analysis from Portland's top political blogger, Jack Bogdanski of Jack Bog's Blog.
- Interactive polls, both yes/no and open-ended, with viewer and user questions posed to studio political analysts
- Continuous live video streaming coverage of the local election while NBC network coverage kept us off local TV
The 2008 election truly represented a new level of multi-platform journalism, and the winner was an informed electorate!
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