This autumn, Norway is holding elections for Parliament, and the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet has started its election coverage. The majority of our readers and viewers access our content on mobile and Web TV. As traditional TV viewers get older and decrease in number, we see that digital media is becoming increasingly important. This also applies to political journalism.

Political journalism has always been central to Dagbladet, especially in connection with parliamentary elections. But the coverage today is very different from when we only had a printed newspaper. Today we follow the election campaign on mobile, Web TV, and podcast.

Here are the five most important areas of focus that will allow Dagbladet to deliver the best coverage of the parliamentary election to our readers and viewers this year:

1. TV studio

At Dagbladet, we built our own TV studio very close to the Parliament building. During the election campaign, we have daily Web TV broadcasts where we invite party leaders and high-profile politicians to debate. We also host also some of the country’s leading analytical voices and number crunchers.

Every day for the last two weeks before election day — including election night and the day after — conflict and knowledge meet in Dagbladet’s election studio. The goal is to create agenda-setting content, both in the broadcasts and also in the political journalistic work outside of broadcasting hours, which can be used for further follow-up in the debates on Web TV.

2. “Election machine”

We let users test which party they most and least agree with through the so-called “election machine.” The service was prepared in collaboration with an election researcher and has proved to be very popular in previous elections.

This year we launched the service with a playful twist: In collaboration with one of Norway’s leading psychologists in the field, we connected this to the famous Big Five personality test so that users not only get to know which party they should vote for, but also what kind of personality traits characterise their political views.

3. Ordinary people

We will interview ordinary people, listen to “the man in the street,” as we say in Norway, and let them make their mark on the election campaign. We meet fishermen in the north, farmers in the east, people in churches in the southwest, and everyone in between. This is how we take the temperature of what is still a line of conflict in Norwegian politics: city against village.

4. Live coverage

Dagbladet aims to be best at breaking news. That is why our live coverage during the election campaign is extremely important to us. We will be the first with pushes, articles, and TV broadcasts when something big happens. For that reason, we developed our own monitoring tool. Using machine learning, we can be first to deliver the latest news. This is a tool that also helps us in election campaign coverage.

5. Unique content

It is an important ambition for us in political journalism to create unique journalism. We are committed to finding stories other media do not find.

Dagbladet has been engaged with political journalism since 1869. Our commentators cover the election across a variety of media. They analyse the debates and assess politicians’ efforts.

Fragmented media

Although major events such as political party leader debates can still draw many viewers to traditional television, there is no doubt that media use is changing dramatically. TV ratings are declining, and the average age of the TV viewer is going up. If you want to reach the entire population, and not just parts of it, you must be present on many platforms with accurate content. You need be where the users are.

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