Digital news editor Nicole Hernandez along with deputy live blog editor Bridget Brown and customer engagement manager Natalia Gutiérrez worked with Spanish language editors Sara España, Mayra Pertossi, María Sol Borja and religion correspondent María Teresa Hernández to produce the AP’s first live blog in Spanish during Venezuela’s highly anticipated presidential election.
It was the first time in 25 years that the opposition had a real chance to win in Venezuela, creating an audience appetite for information, context and updates from the field. Ahead of the election, and after a string of successful live blogs in other elections in the books, Hernandez suggested to Latin American news directors to launch the AP’s first Spanish-language iteration of the blog to fill that appetite.
With training from Brown and Nicole, España, Pertossi, Hernández and Borja updated the blog constantly during the election day, feeding updates to Spanish-language audiences in Venezuela and beyond. Meanwhile, Gutiérrez, Nicole and Brown carefully updated the presentation of the blog to ensure an audience-friendly experience and maximum impact across platforms.
The blog was updated for more than 20 hours until the electoral authorities announced that the winner had been president Nicolás Maduro, a result that has been disputed by the opposition because of the lack of verifying information from the polling stations.
The Venezuelan election Spanish live blog received a total of 2.6 million pageviews, making it the second most-read, single-day live blog in AP news history, behind only the Trump assassination attempt blog, according to AP’s digital team.
For excellent experimentation and successful effort to reach growing Spanish-language audiences, this team earns Best of the AP — Second Winner.
Visit AP.org to request a trial subscription to AP’s video, photo and text services.
For breaking news, visit apnews.com.
Submission Links
https://bit.ly/4dqHIB1Related articles
