PBS NewsHour Preparing Most Comprehensive Coverage of the Midterm Elections on PBS to Date

Providing PBS Member Stations Further Collaborations, and Timely
and Innovative Toolkit of Resources

July 31, 2018 (Washington, DC and Los Angeles, Calif.) — PBS NewsHour, the nightly news broadcast anchored by managing editor Judy Woodruff, will continue its efforts to further collaboration with PBS member stations around the country with its expanded bench of political reporters. On coverage of the midterm elections, NewsHour will tap into local newsrooms and resources for coverage of U.S. Senate, House and gubernatorial races where the results will have national political significance, moderate local and state debates, and provide a toolkit of resources available for use on broadcast and online in the months leading up to and on Election Day, November 6, 2018.

In the past year, the team at PBS NewsHour has worked to strengthen its relationships with local PBS member stations’ news operations — on covering the midterm elections, utilizing local reporters on NewsHour broadcasts, and airing and publishing online reporting that originated in local markets. Leaning on Woodruff and NewsHour’s expanded team — including Capitol Hill correspondent Lisa Desjardins, White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, national correspondent Amna Nawaz, national correspondent John Yang and correspondent William Brangham — NewsHour journalists have already moderated 2018 general election and primary debates in Hot Springs, Virginia and Miramar, Florida, with plans and discussions for more later this summer and fall.

PBS NewsHour will provide stations with live, customizable real-time election graphics and maps powered by Associated Press data for use in their local broadcasts on November 6. This effort, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, will provide a new avenue for local stations to distribute quality PBS NewsHour journalism and late-breaking news on Election Day.

Recent examples of collaboration include Alabama Public Television news director Don Dailey, host of Capitol Journal, reporting on NewsHour’s broadcast in late 2017 on the state’s special election for U.S. Senate, Desjardins’s report for NJTV News in May about New Jersey’s role in a potential power shift in Congress following this year’s midterm elections, and a segment that aired on NewsHour in June from Andrew Batt of Iowa Public Television on the four Democratic House candidates vying for their party’s nomination that may help define the soul of the party.

In March 2018, PBS NewsHour executive producer and WETA SVP Sara Just named Woodruff the solo anchor of PBS’ flagship nightly news program, as well as announced the hires of Nawaz and Nick Schifrin as foreign affairs and defense correspondent. Woodruff, who re-joined NewsHour in 2007 as a senior correspondent, was named one of NewsHour’s rotating anchors in 2011, and in 2013, she and the late Gwen Ifill were named co-anchors and managing editors of the program, the first time in history two women were the co-anchor team for a national nightly news broadcast. With more than four decades of experience reporting at PBS, NBC and CNN, Woodruff has covered 12 presidential elections; interviewed 7 U.S. presidents; and is the recipient of the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism, the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Broadcast Journalism/Television, and The Arizona State University Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, among other honors.

In 2017, PBS NewsHour was ranked the most objective news source and the most credible news program on television in a study of opinion leaders by Erdos & Morgan. This year it was the recipient of a Peabody Award for the 2017 series “Inside Putin’s Russia,” produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center, which unearthed the roots of modern Russia — why President Vladimir Putin remains popular, why the government acts the way it does, how its propaganda machine works, and where the conflict with the United States is likely to go.

Since the 2016 election (December 2016 – May 2018), PBS NewsHour’s nightly broadcast is up +25% vs. the previous 18 months, with 1.18 million viewers per minute. This past year (July 2017 – June 2018), PBS NewsHour’s website averaged 4.8 million users per month, with an additional 1 million unique monthly viewers on Apple News. Combined video viewing at pbs.org/newshour and on YouTube was up +7% at 13.7 million monthly views and streams. On social (Facebook and Twitter), NewsHour reached a combined 15.6 million users monthly.

About PBS NewsHour

PBS NewsHour is a production of NewsHour Productions LLC, a wholly owned non-profit subsidiary of WETA Washington, DC, in association with WNET in New York. Major funding for PBS NewsHour is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and public television viewers. Major corporate funding is provided by BNSF, Consumer Cellular, Leidos, Babbel, and Raymond James, with additional support from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Lemelson Foundation, National Science Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Ford Foundation, Skoll Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Friends of the NewsHour and others. More information on PBS NewsHour is available at www.pbs.org/newshour. On social media, visit PBS NewsHour on Facebook or follow @NewsHour on Twitter.

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Press Contact: Nick Massella, 202-286-8844 // nmassella@newshour.org