PBS NewsHour

PBS NewsHour is one of the mainstays of America's political press. Since its inception as the MacNeil/Lehrer Report during the Watergate hearings in 1975, it’s delivered some of the best news, analysis and insight into Washington politics. Millions of Americans tune in each day to its unique non-commercial format. In a media landscape characterized by mistrust and division, PBS NewsHour stands out as a standard bearer of quality, accuracy and fairness. We worked with the NewsHour’s team over several months to re-build and re-imagine their platform and build a new digital home.

Most recently, NewsHour and Upstatement worked together to develop graphics for the 2020 election season. We set out to:

• Design clear, informative graphics that work everywhere NewsHour audiences might encounter them (on the broadcast, the web, and social media).
• Replace a laborious and error-prone workflow of manual edits with automated, always-up-to-date components.
• Build a centralized app and easy workflow that empowers the NewsHour for future election seasons.

The suite of components includes race results tables, “winner called” graphics, maps that let users explore county-by-county results, and visualizations of voter survey responses. All of these are populated in real time by a data feed from the Associated Press. Editors access a dashboard where they can power broadcast graphics, download perfectly-sized social images, and copy small code snippets to use the live-updated graphics anywhere on the web. Read more about our web component approach .

We also helped visualize the 2018 midterm election results. The graphics were used on the site during election night and in the live broadcast coverage. We emphasized the shifting Balance of Power , giving NewsHour users and viewers a live look at how the makeup of Congress was shifting with each race.