
Announcing Election Urgent Care: Connecting U.S. journalists to tools and resources in the post-election period
article
Newsrooms can now sign up for free resources to enhance their coverage of the post-election period in the U.S. through Election Urgent Care from a coalition of organizations led by the Knight Election Hub, Votebeat, and Hearken.
Journalists covering U.S. elections may face unexpected challenges following the election. The Election Urgent Care team will help newsrooms continue to provide essential information to their communities during the post-election transfer of power.
The Election Urgent Care team, which also includes representatives from Muckrock and OpenNews, plan to provide rapid resource matching for election-related support services in the following focus areas:
- Safety, including digital defense from online threats, cybersecurity, and physical security.
- Legal assistance, both with advice on election law and legal representation where possible.
- Journalistic background advice on how to cover unexpected tactics and events related to election administration.
- Document and data gathering from states and municipalities
- Data wrangling and analysis for newsrooms that lack data journalism capacity
- Other services as needed.
Newsrooms covering U.S. elections are invited to apply for access to the Votebeat Expert Desk/Election Urgent Care Slack. This program is not for partisan organizations.
“We’ve learned a lot about how to connect organizations providing resources to help cover the election and newsrooms that need the help,” said Scott Klein, entrepreneur in residence at Newspack and program director of the Knight Election Hub. “We’re going to take what we’ve learned as well as the connections we’ve made in newsrooms to offer help to newsrooms in need during the potential tumult on and after Nov. 5.”
Resource providers who will be available on-call from Election Day (Nov. 5) forward to offer assistance to newsrooms who need help. The program will not provide direct funding to newsrooms, or provide editorial content such as stories, graphics or visuals.
We appreciate the contributions of a number of journalism support organizations working as Urgent Care communication partners to connect newsrooms to needed tools, including the American Press Institute, the Center for Cooperative Media, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Institute for Nonprofit News, Radio Television Digital News Association and Trusting News.