The freedom is a blessing and a curse.

Josh Tyrangiel of Time Magazine, Wendy Warren, A.M.E. of the Philadelphia Daily News and Kevin Rooney of OpenSecrets.org spoke on a content and design panel called “Covering Elections.” Steve Schifferes of BBC News moderated.

Tyrangiel said part of knowing what to do comes from understanding why your audience comes to your publication’s Web site. Time Magazine has a long-standing reputation in news analysis, for example. Tyrangiel said there’s more than enough electoral coverage on the Web; therefore, “If you’re going to do it, do it in a way that’s specific to you and specific to who you are.”

Time Magazine recently launched “The Page,” a political news analysis site. “It gives people an idea of what’s going on and why it matters to them,” Tyrangiel said. Time intentionally shies away from doing super-basic stories and focuses more on the “Why? How?” angle. The magazine tries to provide “The best of who we are, and the best of what people expect from us.” The Page is part of that strategy in the elections area.

Coming from another angle, Wendy Warren of the Philadelphia Daily News acted as the “passionate advocate” for local election information. In addition to the Daily News, Warren runs TheNextMayor.com. “Our goal with this project was very simple: It was to cover the crap out of the Philadelphia mayor’s race,” she said.  The project is not just online – it was also featured on WHYY and through the print edition of the Daily News.

Some of Warren’s tips:

• Start “really, really early”.
  
• Use independent Web sites: Warren admitted she’s a fan of vertical niches because they allow freedom in design, branding and more.
  
• Echoing comments from Dan Gillmor earlier today, she said, “Archive. Archive. Archive.”
  
• Advocate openness, and accept things from the community. Ask the community to participate. (At one point, she said, politicians were trying to “game the system” by posting entries such as “Isn’t candidate X really great? I think he’s great.” She asked community members to “out” campaign staffers who did this – and they did.)

Kevin Rooney of OpenSecrets.org spoke as the independent, non-mainstream national media outlet. OpenSecrets.org focuses on national elections and looks closely at campaign finance. Much of the site is driven by impressive, deep databases and computer-assisted reporting.

            See the panel’s tipsheet here!