US election coverage
- 3 Nov 08, 05:06 PM
As messrs McCain and Obama have criss-crossed the US in a final round of campaigning ahead of the election, I hope you won't mind me explaining here some of the changes we've got planned on the BBC News website which will, we hope, allow us to report the event even better, using some new features.
Central to our coverage will be a fast and comprehensive results service, a live video stream of BBC TV election special programming for UK and international audiences and the full range of reporting from BBC correspondents across the US and around the world.
To display all this effectively on the website we'll be making use of new designs that should allow us to show the main story in a wider, two-column format on the front page with a selection of bigger images to accompany it, along with more room for other related election news headlines.
For an idea of how the new page format is shaping up look at the US elections page, where we have already made some of the changes.
There is also a new carousel format allowing a bigger selection of on demand video to be displayed.
From Tuesday evening UK time we'll have an area on the main pages displaying the full results service including a dynamically updating map, scoreboard and ticker. These will be fed by a multiplatform results data system which will also be driving the results for our other platforms including mobiles, and BBC TV and radio on election night. It will be co-ordinated from a central results desk in our Washington bureau.
Another recently developed feature will be a "live page" - a format that allows us to provide the live video stream of the election programme on a page which also automatically refreshes to bring in the latest text updates as they come in, including key developments, quotes and comment from BBC correspondents, our users and the rest of the web. This was first used for Olympics coverage over the summer on the BBC Sport site and we've now adapted it editorially to give us a fast-moving, multimedia format for reporting the election as the story unfolds.
The BBC US election blogs, meanwhile, will continue to play an important part in our coverage, featuring on-the-ground reporting by Gavin Hewitt and Matt Price from the campaign camps and Justin Webb's overview, insight and analysis.
So those are some of the main things we're planning. I hope it all works - and that you like it!
Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website
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