It’s that time of year again. Candidates are preparing for the election cycle, and The Gateway is readying for our busiest time of the year. Before we get into the madness that is the campaign period, we thought it was best to break down the coverage our readers can expect from us in the coming weeks.

Our coverage is divided between two sections: news and opinion. News content is impartial, journalistic coverage of elections. Opinion covers editorial content, where a variety of writers state their thoughts regarding candidates, campaigns, and the election as a whole.

Something key to add is that The Gateway does not endorse candidates or campaigns. Any editorial content written supporting or railing against a given candidate are the opinions of the writer, and the writer alone.

News

Candidate Q&As

Over reading week, we ask candidates a set of standardized questions for each race. They range from general questions about candidate platforms to specific issues that the portfolio has been dealing with in the past year. If candidates fail to schedule an interview with us, they won’t receive this initial coverage and their absence will be noted.

Forum Recaps

Members of our news team will attend, record, and recap all the forums which the candidates attend. Forum coverage will summarize major talking points at the forums. The news crew will also livetweet forums; we’ll tweet out which writers are tweeting at forums here: Follow @The_Gateway

The forums we will be covering include:

• Lougheed College Forum (February 28, 5 p.m., ECHA L1-490)
• SUBStage Forum 1 (12 p.m. on March 1, SUBStage)
• SUBStage Forum 2 (12:30 p.m. on March 2, SUBStage)
• Campus Saint-Jean Forum (12 p.m. on March 3, Pavillion McMahon)
• Myer Horowitz Forum (12 p.m. on March 6, Myer Horowitz Theatre)
• Residence Forum (5 p.m. on March 7, Lister Cafeteria)

There is also Augustana Forum at 6 p.m., but we will not be covering this.

Election Night Coverage

This is when we figure out who wins and loses. We will have real-time coverage of race results on social media (again, Twitter and Facebook), and we’ll publish interviews with the winners and losers later in the evening. Keep an eye out for a results video as well.

Election Dissection

In this annual feature, three SU political insiders break down the campaign, the races, and offer their opinions on who they think should and will win. Of these three panelists, one is a former Gateway staff member, one is a former Students’ Union “hack,” and one is a third party who is heavily involved in non-Students’ Union governance.

 

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Opinion

Bite The Ballot

These are race-by-race editorial breakdowns written by opinion staff and volunteers. Each writer will follow a race through nominations and forums, and will combine this information with each candidate’s platform to offer an opinion on who should win.

Poster Slam

Another annual feature, the Poster Slam takes a look at each candidate’s campaign poster, and — for lack of a better term — slams it. We’ll praise or eviscerate the design, photography, and all-around look of each poster. Some are good, some not so much.

Other Content

If our opinion writers have thoughts on the elections process itself, specific elements of voting, or anything else elections-related, we will bring that to our editorial content.

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Awesome, so where can I keep it locked for news?

Several places. First of all, keep an eye on all our social media accounts for live updates and ongoing coverage. In addition, keep it locked on the #UASUVote 2017 tag on https://thegatewayonline.ca for all our elections content. In addition, keep an eye on the SU Elections Cheatsheet for direct links to all our content.