This list of election coverage resources is meant to provide journalists with tools they can use immediately in their work during the election week and in the weeks ahead. We hope you find this useful; please share these resources with your colleagues and peers.
If there are any other resources you think belong here, please email kamila.jambulatova@pressinstitute.org or lilly.chapa@pressinstitute.org.
The Election Urgent Care Slack
🔗 The Election Urgent Care team, led by the Knight Election Hub, Votebeat and Hearken, with the partnership of API and other organizations, provides rapid resource matching for election-related support in the following 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 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
Apply to join the Slack community. Operating through Dec. 11.
Safety and security
Personal safety
🔗 Bookmark the Committee to Protect Journalists’ U.S. Presidential Election 2024: Journalist safety kit. To access safety information, you can also text CPJ’s automated chatbot on WhatsApp at +1-206-590-6191.
🔗 The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, Politics and the Press, catalogs “reports of press freedom aggressions by candidates and their teams running in federal elections.”
🔗 Check out the Riot ID guide to get a better understanding of the effects of tear gas, pepper spray and more.
🔗 You can also watch CPJ’s short videos on “Preparing for a demonstration,” “When demonstrations escalate” and “Teargas.”
🔗 Review the International Women’s Media Foundation’s tips on safety in the field. You can also apply for their United States Journalism Emergency Fund to request support for immediate needs related to your professional work, such as destroyed or stolen equipment and protective gear.
Online safety
🔗 Bookmark Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline. If you’re at risk, they can help you improve your digital security practices to keep out of harm’s way. If you’re already under attack, they provide rapid-response emergency assistance with support in nine languages.
🔗 If you are currently under attack, check out these resources from the Coalition Against Online Violence’s Online Violence Response Hub, including immediate help if you’ve been doxxed, are a target of online abuse, or are in the middle of a severe online attack.
🔗 To protect yourself from doxxing, you can remove personal data by signing up for services, such as DeleteMe. IWMF is offering a free one year DeleteMe subscription to journalists in the U.S. through our Newsroom Safety Across America initiative. Apply by Nov. 30.
Mental health
🔗 Explore the psychological safety portion of CPJ’s guide.
🔗 The International Research and Exchanges Board provides tips on psychosocial self-care for journalists.
🔗 The IWMF Mental Health Guide for Journalists Facing Online Violence offers resources and exercises such as technologies for managing anxiety, acute stress, panic attacks and more. You can also apply for their United States Journalism Emergency Fund to request small grants for medical and psychological care.
🔗 The Rory Peck Trust has a therapy fund that covers the cost of treatment for freelance journalists who would benefit from professional psychological support.
🔗 Journalists and mental health: an API resource guide has a comprehensive list of resources for journalists and managers.
Reporting at the polls
🔗 You can use the voting time estimator tool from the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence to get an idea of how long it will take a person to vote based on the size of the ballot. Their live wait time display can help you identify the waiting-in-line times of polling locations.
🔗 VoteRiders provides information on voter ID rules for each state.
🔗Brennan Center for Justice offers explainers on how elections are certified in battleground states.
🔗 Understand the technology used in your jurisdiction. Read up on specific types of voting equipment.
🔗 The Associated Press’ Explaining Election 2024 hub provides a number of explainers, including how voting machines are used, why hand counting is more prone to error, and more.
Legal rights
🔗 The Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press’s Election Legal Guide provides an overview of legal issues that journalists may face while reporting at the polls, including exit polling, newsgathering in or near polling places, ballot selfies, and access to ballots and election records (also available in Spanish). Journalists with additional questions, including questions about states not featured in this guide, should contact the Reporters Committee’s free Legal Hotline.
🔗 The Knight Election Hub’s Election Law Blog from election law expert and UCLA professor Richard Hasen and other contributors includes their takes on the election issues in the daily news.
🔗 The CPJ’s Guide to Legal Rights in the U.S. offers quick tips and recommendations as well as information on specific states.
🔗 Explore the Brennan Center for Justice’s series on Legal Protections From Election Subversion and Voter Suppression.
Misinformation
🔗 NewsGuard’s 2024 U.S. Election Misinformation Monitoring Center will keep you up to date as they cover misinformation surrounding this year’s U.S. presidential election.
🔗 PolitiFact’s Scorecard is fact-checking elections, but you can also explore their fact-checks based on the social media platform where it was shared, like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or X.
🔗 Read the Brennan Center for Justice explainer on How to Detect and Guard Against Deceptive AI-Generated Election Information.
Reporting on conflict
🔗 Check out CPJ’s Journalist Safety: Elections resource for journalists covering conflict.
🔗 Read The Election Deniers’ Playbook for 2024 from the Brennan Center for Justice to better understand tactics used to undermine safe and secure elections.
🔗 Here’s an API checklist on planning for covering (and even defining) political violence.
🔗 The ADL’s Hate Symbols Database and Tools to Track Hate can be used to monitor hate and extremism in your area.
Reporting best practices
🔗 The Associated Press details how they declare winners, which can be used to understand how that affects your reporting.
🔗 Use election fundraising data from OpenSecrets to add context to your reporting.
🔗 From Trusting News, an API grantee, this checklist to build trust on Election Day includes tips on checking your headlines and using word choice guides to avoid framing that can feel polarizing. The Trusting News team has also compiled pre-written explainers to set Election Day expectations, as well as copy-and-paste language to help you respond to public perceptions.
🔗 Election SOS created a story template for newsrooms to adapt and use to help set expectations around when to expect election results.
🔗 Factchequeado offers voting explainers in English and Spanish, and a chatbot in Spanish that answers questions about the voting process and debunks common election misinformation.
🔗 The News Revenue Hub 2024 Elections Campaign Toolkit contains pre-written emails, social media copy, graphics and more that you can use to let your audience “know how your journalism serves and informs them, your community, and our democracy.
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Election-focused flyers, postcards and print voter guides will add to the knowledge of how news organizations can deploy print to reach new audiences and deepen community ties.
With November fast-approaching, we are re-upping both Election Day and post-election resources that news leaders may want to use.
