Have you ever thought about liveblogging a pre-electoral show-down of the most prominent politicians involved in the upcoming elections?
How about getting them answering the concerns of real people in real time? Liveblogs can bring otherwise-unreachable-politicians down to earth and spare one hour of their time to meet the citizens – whether they’re in their office or an airport lounge.
Yesterday, Brussels-based newspaper La Libre - one of the main players in Belgium’s fragmented media landscape – showed the world yet another way liveblogging can be brilliantly applied to the cause of political reporting. Last week, news behemoth CNN and news startup Watchdog.org both live fact-checked the first U.S. Presidential Debate.
As the municipal elections approach (they are scheduled for the 14th of October), political and social media editors at the Belgium paper interview the big guns of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, the Socialist Party, the Francophone Democratic Federalists and The People’s Party.
Common people can interact with them by sending in their questions at scheduled times of the day, in the most common and simple Q&A format. To achieve their editorial objectives, the newsroom has opted for a four-embed page display.
Needless to say, the event had the limelight on the home page, resulting in having 20 to 50 people actively engaged in the discussion with the politicians.
Community engagement is becoming a key strategy for the paper, which has just joined the ScribbleLive family along with its sister publication La Dernière Heure/Les Sports (or, simply, DH).
“This page was created for the local elections. We are organizing every day a live Q&A with one or more candidates,” Pauline Oger, Product Marketeer at LaLibre.be, wrote in an email.“This Wednesday, the whole afternoon was booked and so we had to create four different events. To make sure everything was accessible for the audience, we decided to create a page regrouping all of them. The aim was for the readers to ask their questions to every candidate and follow all the live events at the same time.”
Another live chat is online today, in which the political personalities of the town of Profondeville ”respond directly to your questions, comments and suggestions, each one in turn, for 45 minutes.”
U.S. Election
Meanwhile, the folks over at CNN have been rolling out a new form of live fact-checking during the presidential debates and the Republican-Democratic conventions in the US. A new client of us, Watchdog (collection of independent journalists covering state-specific and local government activity) uses ScribbleLive as a pure live fact checking tool.
“CNN is planning to differentiate its programming by making fact-checking a big part of its debate coverage. John Berman and Tom Foreman will comprise the “reality check” team, and will be looking to call out President Obama and Mitt Romney for the inevitable stretches of truth that will occur” wrote Alex Weprin on the MediaBistro.
“A truly interactive destination, CNN.com/Debates will feature companion content including a live blog, on-demand videos and articles, candidate profiles, social media integrations and a Social Buzz meter.”
As soon as elections approach in your country, make your website home of some amazing real-time political coverage: differentiation, experimentation and quality journalism are indeed the key to succeed in this dire world of standardised media.
If you are hungry about more ways real-time content delivery platforms can be applied to the exciting world of political reporting, community management and citizen journalis, feel free to check out these posts: here, here or here.
