Dismal election night for newspaper websites
By Andrew Grant-Adamson • May 4th, 2007 • Category: Newspapers, OnlineElection nights are difficult for newspapers with radio and TV making the running with their ability to provide live coverage. The web should change that but looking at the Times, Guardian and Telegraph sites this morning they have a long way to go. The BBC’s web coverage is way ahead with impressive interactive map with a “find results by postcode” search.
The Guardian too has an interactive map with very basic results (eg Lib Dem gain from NOC) but navigation is not very clear. More detail is provided for the Scottish Parliament and West Assembly elections.
A “live election results” link from the home page leads to what is really a blog of the latest headlines, not tabulated results.
The Telegraph’s “live election map” is a static view of the island with multi-coloured measles — no indication whether they indicated change or no change. There were individual results in text but for the English councils the information was no better than that provided by the Guardian map.
At Timesonline has conventional stories and a polling day slideshow but that consisted mainly of old pictures from the campaign.
All the papers have concentrated their efforts on Scotland and Wales which are the big story, but if the BBC can provide a good results service for the English council elections why can’t the newspapers do the same?
Maybe the answer is that there were no elections in London.
Andrew Grant-Adamson is Andrew Grant-Adamson is a journalist who now teaches a new generation of writers, subs and editors at the University of Westminster.
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A student who will graduate this Saturday came to see me earlier this week. She wasn’t a journalism student, but she has decided she wants to be an independent video journalist. From me she wanted … Dismal election night for newspaper websites Election nights are difficult for newspapers with radio and TV making the running with their ability to provide live coverage. The web should change that but looking at the Times, Guardian and Tele…
, was over the moon with beating BBC to publishing some political story – text and picture online. This year, the election coverage of Britain’s online newspapers was judged by quite different standards, and Andrew Grant-Adamson was far from impressed by their stabs at using interactive maps. I’ve previously written on how I think live blogging is a great way of covering elections, but, even though I had great fun
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