Community service award entry Missouri Press Association 2012 When covering the fall 2012 election, the

Missourians community outreach team sought to invite readers to interact with the facts and issues surrounding the election. We wanted to encourage a deeper connection to the information, and to our news products, by inviting a more active relationship between voters and the issues theyd see on their ballots. We also wanted to make sure that readers realized whether they were ready for the election, and to and provide resources within that context to learn more. We first created an online quiz, challenging readers to see if they were ready to vote. We published the quiz as one story file on our website (above left) and also as individual one-question quizzes, embedded in election stories (bottom left). We then wrote quiz questions on an easel to take around town (bottom right). We went to community events with the easel and challenged readers to answer one question. If they answered correctly we gave them a piece of candy (many of the events were Halloween-themed). Stapled to the piece of candy was a slip of paper with links to election coverage. Kelly Moffitt and Alicia Stice, Columbia Missourian