What guides your election coverage? Do you focus on the content of party platforms or on the positions of the candidates? Have you ever wondered whether these topics truly reflect what matters to the people in your city?

With community-centered election coverage, you can reverse the usual approach: instead of starting with political actors, you begin with the questions, concerns, and ideas of the citizens. Rather than repeating campaign messages, you highlight what truly matters to people – from missing bike lanes to social inequality.

As part of the project “Deine Stimme, deine Themen”, the CORRECTIV.StartHub, together with six independent local newsrooms, tested the concept of community-centered election coverage – first for the 2025 federal election and then for the municipal elections in North Rhine-Westphalia. Inspired by the Citizen’s Agenda from the USA, the project demonstrates how this shift in perspective can succeed. In the long term, “Deine Stimme, deine Themen” aims to inspire more newsrooms to implement a more diverse and inclusive election coverage – one that doesn’t just report about people, but works with them.

“Through ‘Deine Stimme, deine Themen’ I felt for the first time that I truly knew what voters want. When I saw these 400 questions from our readers, I got a sense of what really concerns people. It changed something for me – but also for the politicians, who took the time to respond in detail.” – Christian Herrendorf, Co-Founder of VierNull

From the diverse experiences of the newsrooms, a guide has been developed to serve as a reference for implementing your own community-centered election coverage.

Here, you can get an overview of how community-centered election coverage works:

6+ months before the election – Secure commitment

Identify early on people within your newsroom who will actively support and drive the project. Ensure that the necessary resources – staff, time, and technical – are available.

4+ months before the election – Project planning

Consider why you want to implement the project, document your goals in a mission statement, and develop indicators to measure your success later. Determine whom you want to reach – your existing readers or new target groups. Create a strategy for how to engage your audience, how to design participation, and how to continue the interaction with participants after their involvement.

3-4 months before the election – Launch participation

Collect topics and questions that matter to your audience in connection with the election: What concerns do they have, what questions do they want to ask the candidates, and what should politicians finally address from their perspective? This can be done through online surveys or face-to-face engagement – on the street, at people’s doors, at local events, or through partner organizations. The key is to reach your audience where they actually are.

2–3 months before the election – Create the election agenda

Sort, bundle, and analyze the responses. Which topics appear most frequently? Summarize them in an election agenda – a list of the most important topics for your audience, with up to three specific questions per topic. This agenda forms the guiding thread for your coverage. Don’t forget to thank the participants. Share the election agenda with them and/or invite them to upcoming events in their neighborhoods.

1–2 months before the election – Use the election agenda

Now it’s time to get into the details: Create new formats based on the election agenda. Research answers in the party platforms, confront candidates directly with citizens’ questions, write background articles on key topics, or organize events to discuss the questions – your creativity sets the limits.

Important: Whenever you refer to the election agenda, openly explain how it was created, who asked the questions, and why you are running this project. This gives you legitimacy, creates transparency, and strengthens trust in your work.

Election day – Cover live

Use the election itself to highlight your community’s topics once again. Report live, explain procedures, and contextualize the results – always referring to the questions your community submitted.

0–2 months after the election – Measure success

Now it’s time to reflect: What worked well, and what didn’t? Measure your success using the indicators you set at the beginning. Did your reach increase? Did participation grow? Were you able to engage new audiences? Share your insights so other newsrooms and projects can learn from your experience.

Afterwards – Consolidate & learn

After the election is before the election: community journalism is not a one-time project but an ongoing learning process. With “Deine Stimme, deine Themen” the goal is to test community-centered methods on a project basis, develop your skills in listening and engagement, and integrate successful methods into your daily work. The approach of “Deine Stimme, deine Themen” can be applied in any context – such as a citizens’ referendum to identify general key topics or to gather specific questions on a particular issue.

Are you excited to implement community-centered election coverage in your area? The “Deine Stimme, deine Themen” Playbook guides you step by step through the process of community-centered election coverage – with practical templates and examples to inspire you and support your own implementation.

Please Note: The playbook is currently available only in German.

In addition to the playbook, CORRECTIV.StartHub also offers workshops where you can learn the fundamentals of community journalism. With beabee and the CrowdNewsroom, you also have access to the right software infrastructure.

This article is part of our community journalism wiki. Here you can access the full wiki, where you will also find additional resources and further use cases.