The Globe and Mail's Colin MacKenzie, managing editor (news), on how the Internet has changed election coverage at his organization.
The digital age has had its effect on both supply and demand in the news business.
Reporters on the road routinely file half a dozen updates to our (ahem) excellent new politics section each day along with stories for the newspaper.
On the other side, the parties and players make increasing and increasingly sophisticated use of the new tools of the era.
And consumers of news turn to the Web for quick information hits more and more routinely.
As a result, the pace of the Web news cycle has risen exponentially from the trickle of the 2004 election campaign to the slow-moving river of 2006 to the torrent of Niagara Falls this year.
Several trends are driving this.
All branches of the mainstream media are increasingly focusing on their Web presence and are boosting the volume of "live" Web journalism in advance of publication or broadcast in traditional formats.
Readers/listeners/viewers are increasingly searching the Web for more information on the tidbits they catch from quickly-scanned headlines and half-heard newscasts, thus driving ever-increasing traffic to a Web that is more accessible by the month.
And there is the conscious decision by most of the federal political parties to try to set the agenda for the day and force their opponents to jump to their tune by making key speeches and announcements at ever-earlier hours of the morning.
The trick for Web editors — as well as for editors in the traditional branches of the media — is to decipher what is truly relevant amid the white noise of Niagara, then to decide how best to tell that story, in different formats, for different media.
What would be relevant, as one example, is some solid reporting on the various parties' climate policies.
Lots of stuff on polling, strategy and news o' the day, but I see very little in the way of analysis of the parties' actual policies.
Surely what they would try to accomplish if elected is at least as important as how they are trying to accomplish it.
However, the Globe is planning only one story per week on a key issue (it covered the economy on Monday).
Along that line, while there's an impressive volume of election-related information on globeandmail.com, is there any way to see all of the coverage (news and opinion) grouped by topic?
I didn't think so. But sorting on the Web is as important as reporting.
The Globe does solicit reader-generated content such as photos, video and political cartoons, but other than that, you don't really see the voices of the great unwashed masses unless you dig down into comments.
What are the hopes, fears and dreams of ordinary Canadians this election season, and how do they match up with what the parties are trying to deliver?
However, globeandmail.com has run a number of interactive chats, which does provide readers with some direct access to pundits and newsmakers.