[Inside the Newsroom] Election coverage ‘in the olden days’

8 hours ago 5

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How is it in the Rappler newsroom three days before the elections?

I usually find myself using the phrase “in the olden days” to premise my answers to students who visit the newsroom to learn about how we do things at Rappler.

They are three decades or so younger than I am, so you can imagine that their idea of journalism and mass communication is digital-heavy and social media-centric.

Their idea of newsroom operations is born of a mix of what they see in Western movies, what their teachers impart (they’re lucky if these teachers are employed by modern newsrooms), and what they have to make do with in their campus papers.

How do you decide the assignments of reporters? How do you choose what stories to publish? How do you do it, doing live reports, writing up stories, and producing videos on TikTok? How do you plan and prepare for coverage as big as the elections?

Hi! I’m Miriam Grace Go, Rappler’s managing editor — “Miss Go” to the seniors, “Miss Gigi” to the younger ones, probably “Bruha” in some secret chat channels when the staff hate the times I invoke the “The newsroom is not a democracy” principle in our mostly open and flat organization.

If I would just answer the questions of campus journalists and communication students with how we do things, then whatever I will say would just fly above their heads.

By describing to them the traditional mindset and practices in the media, I not only make them realize how the profession is evolving, I also get to stress the innovations we constantly experiment with and the shifts in mindset we embrace at Rappler. I tell them, this is not just about keeping Rappler ahead of the competition, but more about making sure we meet existing and emerging generations of news consumers where they are, thus making journalism continually relevant.

In the olden days 😀, beats in national media were government branches and agencies and police districts; in the provincial press, you were jack of all trades. Our editors called us early in the morning to give assignments if we didn’t have anything planned, we covered events in the morning (our TV counterparts each had a crew tagging along), and advised the desk about what we had gathered.

The editors would huddle in the afternoon to decide what stories would make it to the lineup, we submitted our stories, then relaxed. If we wanted to mine databases for investigative reports, we cross-tabulated data manually, drew graphs and bars to help us picture patterns, in our downtime — for months!

Today, we have editorial clusters, which I urge to operate like “mini-newsrooms.” Each cluster is headed by an editor, with reporters, researchers, producers, artists, digital communications specialists, and community engagement project managers as members. Instead of a government agency for a “beat,” a cluster focuses on a sector or group of sectors.

They plan their daily priorities, coverage, and content based on a larger agenda that I draft weekly in consultation with them. They all can write, take and edit videos on their phones, engage audiences on our Rappler Communities app, and suggest a teaser or two for our social media platforms. We cover daily, but we plan with a bigger picture in view.

And so when our latest visitors this week asked how we prepared for election day coverage in the past two months — their idea of poll coverage “in the olden days” 😀 — their eyes widened when I said, we started covering the elections a year ago. If politicians prepare for their campaigns at least a year before the polls, then journalists covering them must do the same.

The thoughtful, nuanced content you see on Rappler’s platforms are products of months of immersing the team in backroom movements of political camps, in communities and their gut issues, and in big data that can explain voter attitude and behavior, and politicians’ decisions.

In the olden days 😀, and if you had a really big team, each national slate was assigned a reporter (or two); local races were covered by entire regions-based news bureaus; and candidates were trailed in all their sorties.

Today, our senatorial reporters cover how the overall contest is shaping up. They cross over from one party to another, they know the issues confronting all sides.

We cover the party-list election the same way: not individual parties but how the entire exercise is turning out.

Lifestyle reporters have joined the action, inquiring why campaign jingles are a staple in Philippine elections and whether celebrity is enough to make a candidate win. We acknowledged that business, governance, and politics do mix — a lot.

“National” reporters have been assigned to the vote corridors, where voter concerns and dynastic politics have not been sufficiently surfaced. Agile and enterprising Movers, volunteers, and fellows from the campuses have been capturing the voices and colors of their communities like only they could. Coverages are not dictated by candidates’ activities.

How is it in the Rappler newsroom three days before the elections? That’s my long answer.

If you want a deeper peek into how we bring you the news, join our election watch — bookmark the Rappler election site.