Elections - Online Coverage Highlights

The council and mayoral elections provided journalists with a great opportunity to indulge in a bit of online multimedia reporting.

Here’s just a small selection to give an idea of what was happening on the Web during and immediately after the vote counts.

 Live Blogging

The Liverpool Daily Post set up a live blog which was posted to by ten reporters in different locations across the city.

Using CoverItLive software, the blog featured immediate updates and election results as they were declared.

The BBC also ran a live blog throughout Thursday night, hosted by Newsnight anchor Emily Maitlis.

Emily’s Election also included live posts from political bloggers representing the three main parties.

 Twitter

Wrexham’s Evening Leader posted immediate updates to its Twitter feed throughout Thursday night.

Digital Editor Christian Dunn told Holdthefrontpage.co.uk: “Our websites, and services such as Twitter, really give us back an advantage - allowing local journalists to be at the forefront of breaking news.”

He added: “This means that regional newspapers, like the Evening Leader, can finally break news just as fast as the big boys - even Sky and the BBC.”

And the nationals also made use of Twitter on election night, with the Guardian posting results tweets.

While blogger and lecturer Paul Bradshaw created a feeds filter application to show how many people were twittering about London mayoral election candidates Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson.

 Video

The Bolton News had several videojournalists hard at work on election night and their presence paid off as they secured an interview with prominent Labour MP Ruth Kelly.

Videojournalists at the Liverpool Daily Post captured some of the images of the night and produced an interesting overview of the results.

And the BBC’s live blog also boasted embedded video clips featuring interviews with Boris Johnson’s dad and impressionist Jon Culshaw.

 User-Generated Content

The Liverpool Daily Post had a small section where visitors could submit their own stories, pictures and comments about the election.

And the Evening Standard hosted some lively debates on its mayoral election messageboards.