The Political Parties aren’t the only ones using the web as a means of information and influence for this election. The news media (broadcast, print) are a traditional means of information gathering by constituents. But many are using this election as a means of engaging Canadians and creating two-way conversation.

So, what are the news media doing differently for the Oct 14^th elections? Let’s take a look at a few examples:

Toronto Star: looking to deliver the news in as many possible ways to readers, the Star developed the Canada Votes 2008 portal featuring details on the 47 GTA ridings (via interactive map), an issues page that organizes content by topic area, a federal poll tracker, and voter guide.

Star columnists will blog throughout the campaign and allow commenting (for the first time) on all Star stories. They plan to continue using the success of Twitter during the Olympics for this Election.

“That way we have three main types of content: we have just the headlines (Twitter), we’re blogging the colour and then we’ve got news in normal articles,” says Marissa Nelson, senior editor of digital news at the Toronto Star. User Generated Content (UGC) will not be available on the Portal.

CTV: on the contrary, UGC will play a large role in CTV’s online push due in large part to the need for two-way communication online. Mark Sikstrom, executive producer of CTV.ca says they are using “a new feature called My Vote  which allows users to send in their thoughts in video format to be posted to the 2008 Election main page . As well, Sikstrom says, “CTV.ca is blogging in a much bigger way (including Robert Fife and Craig Oliver) and providing a more extensive polling tracker online.”

Globe and Mail: the Globe and Mail has launched their political page and have promised increased interactivity.

CBC.ca: the CBC site launched its Canada Votes initiative which provides full commenting on articles, audio and video content and its Political Bytes blog focused on bringing colour and insight to the campaign and key issues.

These are only a few high level examples, and although they aren’t groundbreaking, it’s the start of a trend toward User Generated Content and two-way communication by journalists on important issues and events.

Sources: in part, or in whole, via the following references www.j-source.ca