For an in-depth look at the future of TV news technology and how current events are impacting the state of the industry today, join us at the 2020 News Tech Summit: Building the Newsroom of the Future, Sept. 8-11. (Image credit: Future)Over the last six months, a perfect storm has swept across the news business, radically changing or even obliterating the traditional playbook for election coverage.
The pandemic has killed off campaign rallies, reduced the conventions to a somber virtual shell of the usual festivities and is threatening to rewrite the script for election-night coverage, as news organizations prepare to handle mail-in ballots and voter suppression problems that may prolong their coverage into what one news executive referred to as election results month.
Not surprisingly, the 20 news executives interviewed for this report are calling the 2020 election unprecedented, like no other, unimaginable and completely bizarre.
Usually in the latter part of the election year, the election is the story, sometimes the only major story, said Sam Feist, CNN's Washington, D.C., bureau chief. But this year that is not the case. The election is competing with COVID and our national reckoning on race and policing.
The magnitude of these problems-the largest racial-justice protests in half a century, an economic collapse that sent gross domestic product into a 33% tailspin in the second quarter and a pandemic that has killed nearly 160,000 people-is also prompting news executives to make radical changes in their election and political coverage.
Most notably, that has put issues front and center in the election cycle, as opposed to the usual horse race coverage of stump speeches, rallies and campaign strategies.
The issues we are dealing with in many ways are bigger than the election, said Martha MacCallum, who is co-anchoring Fox News Channel's election coverage and anchors The Story. People have a strong sense of the gravity of this moment and they are looking to President Trump and former Vice President Biden to provide leadership and answers on those issues.
Similar sentiments can be found at most other news organizations. In 2016, there was a big focus on the horse race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and the back-and-forth of that popularity and unpopularity contest, Justin Dial, senior executive producer at the ABC News Live streaming service, said. But in 2020, viewers are more interested in the issues. You have to get beyond the horse race and really dig into the issues.
Significant as it may be, news organizations are not solely focused on the election. We are devoting the vast majority of our journalism resources to the pandemic, the fragile economy and the racial-justice movement that are top of mind with voters, Newsy VP of news and programming Christina Hartman said. In that sense, this will be the first election where the majority of our election coverage is not explicitly about the election.
Sam Feist, CNN's Washington, D.C., bureau chief, says the election isn't the sole story this year. (Image credit: John Nowak: CNN)HOME ALONECovering these once-in-a-lifetime issues has created enormous challenges. About 95% of the staff at NBC News and MSNBC is working from home, the network said. It's changed the way we produce and broadcast our news programs and report from the campaign trail, Rashida Jones, senior VP of NBC News and MSNBC, said.
But many news executives also stress that the work-from-home environment has provided them with a welcome opportunity to rethink the way they tell stories. If you look back four years ago, I think the mistake our industry made was to focus too much on the personalities and the tweets, E.W. Scripps VP of news Sean McLaughlin said. What people missed was that there were a lot of unhappy people.
This time around, we are doing a better job of listening, he said. We are tackling it differently and packaging it differently. And I like that, because it is not about responding to a convention or a press conference or following the candidate on campaign trails where we listen to the same canned speeches. It is better journalism and better for the American election cycle.
One major example of how news organizations are taking a different tack on election coverage can be found in the coverage of the racial justice issues and in the role that Hispanics are likely to play in the election. The projection is that about 32 million Latinos will be eligible to vote this time, Univision VP of politics Lourdes Torres said.
That is making their experiences a center piece not only for Spanish-language networks, but all news outlets. We saw a huge increase in turnout among Latinos in 2018 in key states, Torres said. In 2020, how they engage with the candidates will be very interesting and important to the election.
Younger viewers want those vital social issues covered in-depth. In some sense, this is the election we've been working towards at Vice for a long time, Susie Banikarim, executive VP and global head of news gathering at Vice News, said. Vice has been deeply embedded in issues like racial justice for a long time. We have a young audience that doesn't come to us for the traditional horse-race coverage or pundits shouting at each other. So we really feel like we're leaning into things that we've been covering for a long time.
The reporters who helmed ABC News Juneteenth coverage. (Image credit: ABC News)LOCAL FIRSTWith the pandemic imposing travel restrictions on coverage, having local reporters or ties to TV stations is another key trend. We now have 10 local versions of CBSN and those have been augmenting what we are already doing in terms of going deeper into local politics, Christy Tanner, executive VP and general manager of CBS News Digital, said.
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For an in-depth look at the future of TV news technology and how current events are impacting the state of the industry today, join us at the 2020 News Tech Summit: Building the Newsroom of the Future, Sept. 8-11. (Image credit: Future)Over the last six months, a perfect storm has swept across the news business, radically changing or even obliterating the traditional playbook for election coverage. 
