About our organization:

OpenNews helps people strengthen relationships across organizations and build a more equitable future for journalism. Through interactive events and programs, we help peers share knowledge and care for a community grappling with complex problems.

How we can help you cover the 2024 elections:

OpenNews Communities of Practice Working Groups

The OpenNews elections working groups are meant to work together, which means your questions and participation will drive them. We'll facilitate that process, but please bring your questions, concerns and examples. Election reporting is tougher than ever and collaborating to solve problems or surface new barriers is essential to fulfilling our goals for this election season. We're a friendly crew, we promise!

The groups are looking to solve some big-picture issues by looking at emerging trends, highlighting new/old resources, finding different things to try and affirming best practices in the process. Here are some big questions and potential threads that we've started to follow:

• Audience, community and civic engagement: Who are our intended audiences for election reporting? How do we consider the needs of underserved communities, the politically disengaged or those exhausted by the news? We'll look at tracking source diversity, election process and governance, redefining civic engagement to expand beyond voting and working through assumptions that misguide our understanding of audience, community and civic engagement.
• Better voter guides and products: What is the right mix of information, visualizations and user experience considerations in voter guides? What else can we offer or need to share with audiences? We'll try to find examples of exemplary voter guides and the features that make them stand out. We'll also examine what we can do less of when prioritizing time and resources on this and other common newsroom products.
• Data and data visualizations: How do we present accurate information in a rapidly shifting environment like election day (or week, to be more precise)? What can we do to give people a more complete picture? We'll consider what role data plays in setting expectations for the public and how data viz work can be a useful tool in explaining what's going on during a time of uncertainty. We'll look at the limitations of local data and consider any alternatives we might have for informing the public about our decentralized system of elections.

What you should know: Any working journalist, journalism support professional, political communication or civic engagement subject matter expert can join our calls—we know that a multifaceted group will help offer different perspectives and expertise. These are working calls, so we encourage attendees to bring questions, concerns or ideas with them to the calls to share for the group and supplement our running list of opportunities, resources and problems to be solved. 

More information: Signup form & program information** **

Have questions about using this resource? Here’s where to reach out: john@opennews.org