Keeping readers engaged throughout the election cycle has long been a priority for the Washington Post. During this week’s Webinar, How The New York Times and Washington Post are approaching elections coverage, Candace Mitchell, audience lead for elections at the Washington Post, shared how the company is tackling the 2024 presidential election.

“All our audience teams are engaged in the election in some way,” Mitchell said. “We’re well known for politics and during an election year, we’re going to lean into that.”

Part of her duties include managing WaPo’s editorial SEO team, which means she collaborates closely with editors and reporters on the politics desk. She also works with other desks engaged in coverage, such as national, to optimise coverage.

“I think the more traditional way folks look at audience editors is helping to optimise coverage, helping to frame coverage, and then distributing stories on platform to reach the widest audience possible and meeting them where they are,” she said. However, what she sees as the other side of that coin is turning the audience team into researchers who are looking at topics through the eyes of the audience.

“I want my audience editors to be extremely online in the best way,” she said. “I mean they’re the ones interpreting what audiences want, whether that be on social media [or] Google Trends.”

Reaching two audiences

WaPo caters to two distinct audiences: political junkies who are familiar with the company’s reporting on politics and elections, and those who are casually engaged but are drawn in during key moments — such as when President Joe Biden suspended his bid for re-election. That means creating content that’s accessible to both.

“What I mean by that is our reporters understand politics at a high level, but they can also explain it at a level that makes it a lot more accessible to those folks that during election year may have not been engaged with politics but are coming in certain moments.”

To reach both audiences, WaPo offers newsletters that cover similar topics differently. For example, it recently launched The Campaign Moment, in which reporter Aaron Blake provides in-depth analysis of the latest political news.

At the other end of the spectrum is The 5-Minute Fix, in which reporter Amber Phillips quickly breaks down the headlines.

“She’s very much in the lane of casually explaining this [topic] and even intentionally using language like, hey, these are weird times, this is unprecedented, this is confusing,” Mitchell said, adding that Phillips also does TikTok explainers of her newsletter topics.

The Post’s audience team is organised by platform, with different teams working on search, social media, newsletters, and analytics. They are embedded in desks, specifically politics, and are highly engaged with each other.

“So [we are] very intentionally looking at different platforms for different types of audiences, but of course, they’re often covering the same thing. We try to make sure our products also reflect the different audiences we’re targeting.”

Capitalising on big news moments

Planning for big news moments is a crucial element of WaPo’s coverage, and Mitchell said President Joe Biden’s decision to leave the campaign is an excellent example of doing that.

“Planning for these news moments is huge,” she said. “It’s not like Biden stepped down and we all started scrambling. We plan out the stories we want for this moment and even pre-write what we can.”

That means planning not just the big news story, but all the stories that will be built around it in the days that follow. While the instinctual journalistic reaction to a big story is to explain what just happened and why, the audience quickly moves to the question of what happens next. Mitchell said this is evident from the trends seen on social media, and WaPo understands the importance of not just covering historic moments but being ready to tell the “what’s next” story.

Making sure those stories are ready when the news happens is crucial to capturing the audience’s attention: “If we are only looking at trends when the moment happens, we’re probably a little too late,” Mitchell said. “We already need these things written. We need to predict what our audience needs are going to be.”

Extending the news’ shelf life

Not all readers visit the Web site at the same time, and that affects what kind of content they’re looking for. Mitchell said the teams think about the news experience from the general audience perspective rather than through the lens of a journalist.

“Readers may need to catch up and we need to help them,” she explained. “That often means saying things that feel obvious to a journalist, but [to] a reader, it is just not on their radar. They’re tuning into the election now when we’ve been covering it for probably two years. We need to continually remind ourselves of that.”

That’s where durable content comes in. Directing audiences to previously published pieces adds context to current topics and allows for explaining issues, using alternative formats to engage users, and extending the content’s shelf life.

“I think the debate [between Biden and Donald Trump] was a really good example,” Mitchell said, showing screenshots of two older issues that resurfaced during the debate: immigration and Trump’s misleading statements.

“The debate was a moment where we saw a lot of readers tune into an election that we have been covering. So the way I think about durable content is the audience is going to engage when they want to.”

Having the breadth and depth of coverage readers are looking for is critical, and Mitchell said she hires audience team members based on their ability to forecast trends and know what readers will be searching for.

“If we had tried to put their positions [on immigration] together mid-debate, by the time we posted it, that search trend would’ve been gone,” she said.

“I am really looking for editors who can use their audience experience to predict what they think readers might search for during these big news moments and be able to create that content ahead of time, so we’re already prepared.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .