During the 2024 election cycle, reporters in 40 newsrooms across the U.S. attended the MuckRock and Sunlight Research Center’s Candidate Accountability Trainings, where they upped their skills on how to investigate political candidates.

Covering battleground states and toss-up races, these newsrooms used their skills to compile comprehensive voter guides, uncover outside spending flooding local races, and backgrounding newcomers to the political world.

The training collaboration, supported by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, equipped reporters with candidate-specific techniques, like a comprehensive timeline. These tools bring a candidate’s history into focus, understanding their professional, personal and political backgrounds, and how that fits into their candidacy throughout the 2024 elections.

In addition to the training sessions, reporters tapped into MuckRock’s suite of tools to easily request public documents, track changes to campaign websites and more. MuckRock provided an overview of the public records law for each U.S. state, potential fees related to requests and resources to help to file a public records request.

Here’s a look at how reporters informed their readers about the candidates in battleground states and in news stations across the country during this election season.

Creating voter guides for the public

Voter guides are essential to keeping the public informed about candidates and campaigns in their area, particularly in battleground states.

As a nonprofit newsroom covering the Pennsylvania state government as well as urgent statewide issues, Spotlight PA covered one of the most hotly contested states in the country.

For part of their coverage, the staff at Spotlight PA created a comprehensive voter guide for Pennsylvania’s 17 congressional races, including a background of each political candidate running in the race. Uncovering a political candidate’s background requires reporters to sift through public records, online data, social media and other documents outlined in the training sessions, such as local voter registration records, licensing information and business records.

These races included five toss-up races in the state, including the 7th and 8th Congressional Districts. Spotlight PA, with help from the Sunlight Research Center, was able to compile background on newcomers to the political world, including Rob Bresnahan Jr., who was criticized by his opponent Matt Cartwright for selling his company to a private equity firm.

In Florida, WFLA, who were part of the Nexstar group that received training from MuckRock and Sunlight Research Center, compiled a voter guide for the Tampa Bay area, featuring the U.S. Senate race and background on the Democratic challenger, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. The newsroom also included guides on local school board races, which have been a battleground for Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Democratic party.

Tracking campaign cash

In the Candidate Accountability Training session on campaign finance, reporters learned how to use campaign finance and lobbying records to better inform their coverage this election season.

Iowa Public Radio, a Public Media Journalists Association member, represents one of many public radio stations across the country covering local elections. During this election season, Iowa Public Radio tracked more than $13 million in outside spending in the state’s 3rd Congressional District, which exceeded all outside spending in the state’s other congressional races combined.

During the race, ads featuring Republican incumbent Rep. Zach Nunn, who claims to support a federal abortion ban without exceptions. Reporter Isabella Luu used the Google Ads Transparency Center to uncover how The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent at least $100,000 this election on ads featuring the clip of Nunn.

With billions of dollars poured into the 2024 election season, tracking campaign cash becomes crucial for reporters covering races that can have national implications. The race between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, Colin Allred took in millions of dollars in the Texas Senate race.

There were 19 political action committees (PACs) that spent millions during the Texas Senate Race, according to reporting from KXAN, a Nexstar newsroom. The newsroom also found that Truth and Courage, a PAC supporting Cruz, raised over $8 million between January 2023 and August 2024. They have spent about half of that through the end of August 2024 and ran ads to support Cruz in the race.

Support for these trainings was provided by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation.