This article employs a grounded, qualitative analysis of election reporting to examine competing narratives constructed by media professionals covering the 2012 presidential election. Traditional journalists covered the election using time-worn strategies. In contrast, new data journalists relied upon analyses of large quantitative data sets to generate election stories. Two competing narratives emerged from these different reporting strategies: traditional journalists reported the election as competitive and volatile while data journalists reported the election as stable and consistent. Utilizing analytic frameworks from the media and politics literature, this article explores why the competition narrative provided by traditional journalists dominated election reporting, despite the greater accuracy of data journalists. Our analysis reveals that organizational, market, and structural forces tend to privilege competitive election narratives. To incorporate data journalists more centrally into future election coverage, we recommend heightening the transparency of their work and encouraging greater utilization of the digital commons for news distribution.

中文翻译：

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数据新闻与传统新闻在选举报道中的对比

本文对选举报道进行了扎实的定性分析，以检验媒体专业人士构建的有关 2012 年总统大选的竞争叙事。传统记者使用陈旧的策略报道选举。相比之下，新数据记者依靠对大型定量数据集的分析来生成选举故事。从这些不同的报道策略中出现了两种相互竞争的叙述：传统记者报道的选举竞争激烈且不稳定，而数据记者报道的选举稳定而一致。本文利用媒体和政治文献中的分析框架，探讨了为什么传统记者提供的竞争叙事主导了选举报道，尽管数据记者的准确性更高。我们的分析表明，组织、市场和结构性力量倾向于优先考虑竞争性选举叙事。为了将数据记者更集中地纳入未来的选举报道，我们建议提高他们工作的透明度，并鼓励更多地利用数字公共资源进行新闻发布。