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Election Urgent Care Slack channel
Get matched with the experts and resources your newsroom needs as you cover the period between Election Day and the presidential inauguration.
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1 Week to Go! Coverage Roadmap for Election Reporters
A roadmap for local journalists on where to best focus coverage in the days preceding and following Election Day.
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Media Guide on Covering Elections and Voting
This comprehensive guide will help you understand variability in election laws and practices, and learn how to better navigate misinformation, legal changes, and the logistical aspects of election coverage.
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2024 Scenario Planning Guide
Use this planning guide to ask important questions in your newsroom planning and find support for where you need it most.
Knight Election Hub
Election Urgent Care
A project of the Knight Election Hub, OpenNews, Newspack, MuckRock and Hearken
For the months between Election Day and the presidential inauguration, we’re pivoting our focus to supporting journalists around the country who may face unexpected challenges — from legal questions to safety concerns to journalistic questions around data and FOIAs. Starting November 5, we’ll respond to your urgent questions on an on-call basis through Election Urgent Care.
Three ways to get in touch:
- Join our community on Civic News Company’s Slack
- Email us at urgentcare@electionsos.org
- Apply for support from a specific resource on the cards below
(If you’re looking for the resources that used to be part of the Knight Election Hub, no worries: we’ve compiled all the links for free sites into this table.)
- Start here
- Dig deeper into candidates and data
- Protect yourself
- Track lawsuits and get legal help
- Cover misinformation
- Cover political violence
- Shed light on the voting process
- Talk to experts
- Republish election reporting
Dig deeper into candidates and data
Who are the people shaping the post-election period in your community? What does the data show about voting in your area? What can a carefully-crafted open records request reveal? These organizations can help.
3 resources
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Sunlight Research Center Help Desk
Enlist the pros to help your newsroom conduct deep background research on political candidates and elected officials. Sunlight Research Center will pull documents, analyze data, and produce a timeline and source list that will help your reporters put together impactful stories about political candidates and elected officials your readers need to understand following the election.
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Big Local News Data+ Membership
Big Local News will provide real-time data journalism assistance, mentoring and resources tied to elections coverage through January 20. Newsrooms will have access to virtual office hours for elections-related support throughout 2025.
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FOIA and public records support
MuckRock’s team is available to help newsrooms with public records requests. Whether you need help figuring out where to start or crafting a response to a heavily redacted file or an unusual rejection, we are on deck to help you get the public records that you need at the local, state or federal level.
Protect yourself
Is your newsroom prepared for online or physical attacks? These resources are designed to get you the support you need to take care of your colleagues.
2 resources
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Safety help
We've teamed up with PEN America and a group of cybersecurity and digital defense organizations to create a coordinated rapid-response system for newsrooms who are at risk of or experiencing threats including doxxing, swatting and coordinated harassment campaigns.
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Coalition Against Online Violence: Resources for Journalists
This resource from the International Women's Media Foundation and the International Center for Journalists lays out what journalists need to to to protect themselves in various scenarios, including if they've been doxxed, are in the middle of an online attack or just want to prepare for the possibility of online abuse.
Track lawsuits and get legal help
For everything from ways to keep track of election-related legal challenges to legal advice for journalists covering voting and protests.
4 resources
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RCFP Legal Hotline
The Reporters Committee Legal Hotline is available to journalists and media lawyers from 9-5 p.m. ET on weekdays, and outside of those hours for emergencies.
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Democracy Docket: Court Case Database
This online site founded by Democratic attorney Marc Elias includes a searchable database of decided and pending court cases shaping voting rights around the country.
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RCFP: Protest legal guide
This guide from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press lays out the rights journalists have when reporting on protests, and steps to take to avoid arrest.
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Protect the Vote: Legal Activity
This site run by the Republican National Committee tracks legal challenges to election laws that involve the RNC and Republican groups across the country.
Cover misinformation
These tools will help you determine fact from fiction and track the sources of election-related dis- and mis-information in your community.
3 resources
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Junkipedia: Cross-platform social media monitoring
Junkipedia helps reporters quickly search and investigate what politicians are saying online, across a range of mainstream and fringe social media sites.
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States United Democracy Center: Replacing the Refs
This tool from the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center tracks election deniers who hold federal or state offices across the country, as well as those who are on the ballot in 2024.
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VERDAD
VERDAD.app is a tool for investigating mis/disinformation that is being broadcast on radio stations across the U.S. in Spanish, Arabic, English, and other languages. We are processing 1000+ hours of radio every day and pulling out the individual moments most worth investigating.
Cover political violence
These resources will help your newsroom prepare for or react to election-related extremism or violence. Click the category to view the full list of resources.
2 resources
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Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative: Understanding Threats and Harassment Against Local Officials
This research project tracks the threats local officials face in their communities through surveys, in-depth interviews and event data, all made available for public use.
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Extremism Coverage Prep
This training from Hearken's Election SOS — available for free once participants are vetted — includes videos and other resources to help journalists and their newsrooms develop appropriate editorial policies and stay safe when covering extremism.
Shed light on the voting process
In the post-election period, these resources can help you gain trust with skeptical community and find key data about voting in your city, county or state.
3 resources
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Responding to critics
Trusting News equips journalists to engage in ways that are understandable, human and persuasive. We will coach newsrooms through their tricky interactions and share general support for addressing skeptics of both journalism and election processes.
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Verified Voting: The Verifier
Dig in to individual county data to see the technology officials are using to count ballots. Journalists can then read more about the technology (including how it works, where else it's used and how accessible it is) and see the individual manufacturer.
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The University of Florida's Election Lab: Early Vote
The lab has looked at early voting patterns across the United States in 2020 and 2022, and plans to do the same in 2024. When available, early voting data is broken down by counties, party registration, age, gender and race — as well as information about the early voting method.
Talk to experts
These resources will connect you directly with people who can answer your election-related questions.
2 resources
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Votebeat Expert Desk
The Expert Desk brings together election experts — former officials, tech experts, election law scholars — into a Slack channel to answer quick-turnaround questions from participating reporters and editors. The channel is moderated by Votebeat editorial director Jessica Huseman and Librarian-in-Residence Melody Kramer. Experts will be available through Election Day, and the channel will remain available through mid-December for continued election coverage support.
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Center for an Informed Public: Expert sources
Get expert help for misinformation-related reporting, including quotes from academic experts, historical context around election rumors, information about a specific rumor, data access and/or data visualization tools.
Republish election reporting
1 resource