By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
The most competitive White House race in the past 40 years has sparked The Washington Post to beef up its online political coverage.
“The new features make the site more dynamic,” said Jim Brady, executive editor for washingtonpost.com. “We are using our access to campaigns across the nation to take our readers directly to the scene with in-depth reporting in all forms. It is important we offer readers a unique blend of news and analysis, video, photos, databases and other interactive features as part of our comprehensive political coverage.”
Over the past few months, the newspaper (daily, 699,130; Sunday, 929,921) launched several new features on its site, including blogs, podcasts and video content from the campaign trail.
Custom database
But it’s the paper’s custom-built online database projects that will offer users the most intriguing features, Brady said.
The Washington Post debuted Campaign Tracker, a feature that lets users monitor the travels and appearances of their favorite presidential candidates. The Tracker is one of many new services washingtonpost.com is making available to its readers.
Case in point: Campaign Tracker, an online tool that lets users pinpoint where candidates will appear every day. The site also includes campaign finance data as well as the candidates’ congressional voting records dating back to 1991.
The newspaper collected the data by breaking down the number of visits each candidate made to a particular state or how much in campaign funds they have raised.
“We try to provide as much information as we can so people can get a sense of where the candidates are focusing their energies,” Brady said. “It’s a combination of blogs, database information and online video news shows.”
Washingtonpost.com’s daily political podcast is a compilation of political news from The Post as well as other sources nationwide.
Many products, many audiences
“We are trying to put as many products out there that touch many different mediums — text, video and audio — and trying to put it on as many devices as we can,” Brady said.
Meantime, washingtonpost.com last month partnered with video weblog company PrezVid.com to provide the site with YouTube campaign videos and other multimedia content.
Video production
The paper also plans to produce its own videos, Brady said.
“One of the first initiatives we’ll be making with washingtonpost.com is to invite voters to ask questions and invite candidates to answer,” Brady said. “We are also making our own Internet shows criticizing the candidates’ and voters’ videos and interviewing the players in this new world.”
The video shows includes “PostTalk,” a bi-weekly program featuring interviews with presidential candidates, congressional leaders and White House officials.
On alternate weeks, washingtonpost.com offers a webcast of a roundtable discussion about the latest developments on the campaign trail, at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
Remodeled studio
The shows are produced at a remodeled studio in Arlington, Va., said Chet Rhodes, washingtonpost.com’s assistant managing editor for multimedia.
The studio, equipped with robotic cameras, sports a new backdrop specifically designed for the 2008 campaign.
“Two people can run the whole studio, so what we do is train our existing producers, depending on what section is doing a show in there,” Rhodes said.
The studio, built in 2000, produces two scheduled shows a week for the Web site and also handles a number of other projects.
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