API on political coverage: Collaborate, involve community, cover the voting process and make your plans public

The second installment of the American Press Institute's guide to covering elections and democracy suggests changes in traditional political coverage, and much of it relates to rural places.

API's Jane Elizabeth suggests looking at other news organizations as potential collaborators, not competitors, to serve the public better. She cites the Granite State News Collaborative in New Hampshire and Spotlight PA as examples, but this applies to state legislative races, too.

Other ideas: Involve the community in your planning, and tell your audience how you plan to cover the election, perhaps with a mission statement, as WyoFile did. The weekly Chatham News+Record of Siler City, North Carolina, laid out its coverage plan Aug. 31. That includes what it won't cover: "No fundraisers, no partisan events, no endorsements. . . . Rather, it’s our sincere hope that full and complete coverage — in print, and online, in front of our website’s “paywall” — will give you the information you need to do your duty: make an informed, intelligent choice when you cast your ballot."

The News+Record said it will also cover the voting process, to "promote transparency in the process, and by extension, provide stories about how voting in Chatham County works — as well as a look at the people who are responsible for ensuring a smooth, integrity-based voting experience."

Along that line, "We’ll be asking each candidate his or her opinion on the stubbornly persistent, but factually incorrect, claim that the 2020 presidential election was 'stolen' from then-President Donald Trump, and that Joe Biden in fact did not win that election," Publisher Bill Horner III wrote. "We won’t be a party to misinformation or disinformation. If a candidate speaks untruths or shares incorrect information, we’ll point that out and provide details about why."

UPDATE, Oct. 17: For more on the News+Record's election coverage, including Horner's interview with Buck Ryan of the University of Kentucky journalism school, click here.

For the first installment of API's series, which The Rural Blog summarized yesterday, click here.