How to leverage your election coverage to boost subscriptions

I’ve been in the luxury position of being able to combine my ongoing maternity leave with dipping in and out of The Local Sweden’s coverage of the recent Swedish election in September, an election that saw a far-right party grow to become the country’s second-largest party. 

When I covered the Swedish election back in 2018, The Local – a European news organisation with sites in nine markets, including Sweden – had only a year earlier launched a paywall, asking readers to become paying members (or subscribers, if you prefer to call them that). Even with the small number of members at the time, I noticed that our election coverage gave us a boost. 

We cover the news in English for foreigners who live in our countries or have an interest in them. Many of them can’t as non-citizens vote in elections, but they can participate in the public debate and are affected by the election result, especially in an increasingly anti-immigrant climate.

Today, The Local has some 50,000 paying members, and again, I noticed the same trend when my colleagues in the Swedish newsroom covered the 2022 election. Here are three things I’ve learned work for turning readers into loyal subscribers when covering a busy election cycle.

Explain

The news is by its nature fast-moving, perhaps even more so during election season when reporters trail party leaders as they move from campaign stop to campaign stop, from debate to debate, from press conference to press conference, and sometimes, from scandal to scandal.

In the worst-case scenario, this type of coverage just adds to the reader’s confusion. The constant flow of information makes it impossible to keep track, and it’s easier to tune out. It’s just too much, and it’s all so gloomy. I’ll click on your article, but I won’t read, and certainly won’t pay.

It’s usually not that bad, though. Most of these articles serve a necessary purpose. In the most common scenario, they help the voters understand what’s going on – but not always how or why.

In the best-case scenario, however, your news coverage doesn’t stand alone; it is always joined by explainers, which if done well put the news in context and help readers make sense of it all.

The extra time spent on putting the news in context nearly always pays off. At least seven out of the top ten converters on The Local’s Sweden site in the month of the Swedish election could be defined as explainers. They also tend to have a longer shelf life than most articles, and can be used and reused, or continuously updated with slight tweaks to make sure they stay up to date. 

So what can you explain? Elections provide plenty of inspiration. Who’s eligible to vote and how do you do it, where are the parties’ manifestos, what does this or that policy mean for readers, who are the party leaders and what do they want? Don’t overestimate people’s knowledge – the best explainers may be in-depth, but are easy to understand, learn from and connect with.

If you work in a resource-strapped newsroom, it may even make more sense to do less with more, rather than more with less. Be data-informed and cut down on the stories your readers don’t care about, spend more time explaining the stories that you know are their core issues. It is no coincidence that an explainer about how the rise of the far-right Sweden Democrats could affect the lives of specifically our target audience is now The Local’s all-time top converter. 

Engage

Not sure what to explain? Ask. Your audience aren’t just your consumers, they’re your best resource. Involving your audience in your reporting boosts trust, engagement and loyalty.

Engaged journalism sees journalism not as a one-way street, but as an ongoing dialogue with readers. It can be used to talk about any method that brings your audience into the process.

This can be done in several different ways, whatever works best for your newsroom. It could be as simple as asking readers for their feedback (and actually following up on it, keeping your readers in the loop) or by asking them for their thoughts and amplifying them in articles.

For example, at The Local, our Sweden editorial team quizzed readers about their top election issues and their views on the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the Swedish political debate. Another example I love is the Swedish public broadcaster SVT’s Valakuten (“Election Emergency Room”), where viewers could chat directly with experts to get their questions answered.

The Engaged Journalism Experiments Directory has a number of tried-and-tested examples of engaged journalism – can you adapt any of these to the election beat for your news site?

Engaged journalism can also mean letting your readers get to know you better. The Local now runs podcasts in three of its markets: Sweden, France and Germany. They feature The Local’s journalists chatting about the news of the week, taking a more personal approach to the news.

The Swedish version, Sweden in Focus, inevitably focused heavily on the election in the weeks running up to it and made sure to have a laser-sharp focus on our readers’ core issues, such as the rise of the far right, the impact of the parties’ election pledges on foreigners, and how to combat housing segregation. Podcast downloads were up 50 percent in the month of the election. 

With a 4.8/5 rating on Apple Podcasts and 5/5 on Spotify, the podcast underscores The Local’s trustworthiness. The podcast is free to listen to even for non-members, but according to a survey of listeners, half said it had made them consider becoming a paying member of The Local and one in three said it had made them more likely to renew their membership.

Empower

It’s easy to fall into the trap of reporting on things that are interesting to journalists and political geeks. We live and breathe the news every day and even more so in the run-up to an election. We track polls, politicians, gossip and scandals, and every little detail, every tiny conflict, seems to matter. It’s a horse race, and it is exciting – I would be lying if I said I didn’t think so, too.

But what we think is relevant isn’t necessarily what’s relevant to our audience. Those stories may be entertaining, but they don’t always help people make an informed decision about who to vote for. To steer our approach as journalists in this direction, it may be more helpful to think of the reader as an active decision-maker, not just someone who passively consumes the news. Your coverage can help give them the tools to navigate life and change society around them.

Explainers and engaged journalism are a natural part of this toolbox. Another method to explore is stories that focus on solutions to problems – the Solutions Journalism Network’s Story Tracker lists hundreds of examples of solutions stories about elections. Readers spend more time on such articles, have a higher opinion of their quality and are more likely to return to your coverage.

At The Local, I’ve been writing a weekly newsletter about the Swedish election for members only, Sweden Elects. In the run-up to the election, every edition included a “to-do item” for readers to help give them the tools to have an impact on Swedish politics even if they could not vote. These included information about, among other things, how to write to a member of parliament, how to start or join a political party, or how to find out if you’re eligible to vote on the local level.

One of my favourite of my most naïve and generalising opinions is that apathetic voters don’t exist. Even when they’re self-proclaimed non-voters, when they “don’t care about politicians because they don’t care about us”, people care about the decisions that affect their lives. If your coverage makes them feel like they can affect these decisions in turn, you’ve come a long way.

A final word: stay. Follow up on political pledges, keep in touch with the voters you interviewed before the election, keep explaining the context. If elections are the event, politics is the system. To retain new subscribers, you need to make sure you show up for them in the long run, too.

---