The Your Election 15 team were busy at work covering the Battle for Number 10 last Thursday. Image: Einar Thorsen/Twitter
Hello and welcome to the second installment of our editors’ blog. Joe kicked things off last time with a great overview of our coverage both in the build-up to and on the night of the general election, and following on from that I’ll be giving you a little insight into what we’ve been up to so far.
Is it just me, or does it seem as though there’s been a heck of a lot more broadcast coverage of affairs than at this stage five years ago (with plenty more on offer between now and May 7 too)? We’ve already seen Coalition, a drama which focused on the five days of negotiation after the 2010 general election that eventually led to the formation of the now previous government, as well as the Battle for Number 10, which saw Jeremy Paxman grilling David Cameron and Ed Miliband separately with the audience also having the opportunity to question the two leaders.
It was great to see Paxman back, and although the format didn’t allow for direct comparison between Cameron and Miliband, it served as a decent precursor to whet the appetite ahead of this week’s seven-way leader debate. It was also great for us, as we were able to test our live coverage mettle for the first time.
If campaign teams thought that they’d been working hard ahead of the start of this week, they should have seen our newsroom last Thursday. Pizza crusts and plastic cups may have littered the room, but the team did incredibly well to produce balanced, concise and insightful live coverage and reactionary pieces after the programme of which we can all be proud.
We followed that up with all-day coverage of the dissolution of parliament and the start of official election campaigning on Monday as well as all of the major developing stories from the parties since then. We’ve also introduced news ‘snippets’ on our site, which are perfect for a concise understanding of the serious to the obscure – be it David Cameron revealing his relation to the Kardashian’s (we could all see it, couldn’t we?) or Lord Ashcroft’s decision to retire from the House of Lords – and we will of course be covering tomorrow evening’s ITV debate.
There’s been a great start to our coverage of the general election, and we hope that you’ll stay with us for all of the positive spin and the voting swings until the next Prime Minister steps through the door of 10 Downing Street.
Jack Cozens
Deputy Editor
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