While the caravans of the leaders of the various parties are preparing to crisscross Quebec to meet voters, in the newsrooms, we are busy concocting a relevant menu intended to accompany readers. It will be nice to plead indifference, nothing helps: the electoral campaign comes to whip the troops and makes the journalistic adrenaline soar. Here is what we have prepared for you.
On board the buses
The presence on the political spectrum this year of five political parties, with the entry of the Conservative Party of Quebec, spiced up our campaign bus coverage planning. For reasons of fairness and balance, we have decided to follow all parties and board all buses. Not only will our reporters focus on news from the buses, but they will also be looking to unearth other exclusives through on-the-ground coverage that will allow us to stand out and hopefully elicit reactions to aboard these vehicles.
To the seasoned coverage of our parliamentary reporters, we add the efforts of several reporters whose task will be to meet voters in different regions of Quebec in order to find out about the subjects that concern them. The team from the Environment Division adds to this strike force in the field, because the climate issue will undoubtedly be a key issue in this campaign.
Summaries and live
All platforms of To have to will be fed by electoral content. Our main newsletter, Le Courrier du soir, will include its daily electoral block, for those who would like a summary of the day. Our digital platforms will be updated continuously, in order to follow the highlights of the political contest and to offer fact checks and contextualization in the face of the expected rain of commitments and promises. Reporters, including the five who will join the caravans, will feed a live blog as soon as the campaign kicks off, allowing you to have access to all the information at a glance and to experience the campaign from inside. Social media will be leveraged, allowing us to deliver election content to other voter-readers. A picture is worth a thousand words, our photographers will follow the actions of politicians during the campaign and show the faces of voters.
What do they think?
Experts, analysts and columnists of course make up an important part of this coverage, because it is through their enlightened eyes that we will be able to enrich our own reflection on the campaign. To the expertise of Michel David and Konrad Yakabuski, we add a political analysis of our seasoned reporter and former parliamentary reporter Marco Bélair-Cirino, who will join the caravans. All our columnists will of course comment on this campaign as it unfolds, in their respective fields of experience. In our Opinion section, experts from various disciplines will be asked to add their two cents. Our cartoonist Godin will also offer you an entertaining campaign notebook combining humor and politics. True to tradition, we have invited all party leaders to come and meet our editorial team for a filmed interview, which you can attend. We hope that the five leaders will respond favorably to our invitation.
Video and data visualization
The video team To have to has prepared a menu also intended to understand the main issues of the election campaign, but also to meet voters. Thus, each week, four citizens from different generations will sit down to discuss politics around a main theme. Field video reports, meetings with experts and live coverage complete this planning. In data visualization, our team is also busy identifying electoral issues by revealing them from a new angle. It will also monitor party promises and analyze the weight of the vote in each riding in Quebec. Keep up to date with how election night unfolds with our Election Day Dashboard. Until then, happy campaigning!