By Aurelien Breeden

They are on Facebook, on Twitter (here, here and here), on Dailymotion, on Rue89, France TV Info and France Bleu.

And on their bikes.

La Campagne à vélo (The campaign by bike, or Biking the campaign trail) is a new journalistic initiative that started in February and is co-produced by France Télévisions, Radio France and Playprod in a partnership with Rue89. I have grown particularly fond of La Campagne à vélo because it is one of those rare instances were new technologies and social media are used for journalistic purposes in a refreshing and interesting way.

Two journalists, Raphael Krafft and Alexis Monchovet, are biking around France in order to meet French voters directly in their workplaces and homes until the end of the French presidential campaign in May.

Instead of merely repeating the same format and distilling the same information across different platforms like many news organizations do, La Campagne à vélo uses each outlet for a specific reason and enables the audience to engage with the information much more seamlessly.

Their Facebook page is the main portal: the two journalists post pictures of their trip, updates on their latest video, radio or written productions and ask for help or tips on their journey (the two bikers have to find a place to sleep every night!). Facebook is a platform where they interact with their audience, answering questions or asking if anybody knows where they can rest for the night. The page also includes a live geo-tracking map of the two journalists’ location.

The different Twitter feeds enable live coverage of the journey, from their own trials and tribulations to the places they go to and the people they meet. Like the Facebook portal, the Twitter feeds also enable user interaction.

The interviews and encounters that the journalists have with voters are then packaged into one of three written, audio or video formats and published on one of the partner websites. You can listen and watch the latest audio (an interview with France Bleu Lorraine)  and video (an encounter with French citizens who fled the country for Luxembourg) productions below:

Overall, La Campagne à Vélo is a very strong journalism project because it uses social media (Facebook and Twitter) to interact with the audience and promote quick, live content. It then produces interesting multimedia content across platforms. In essence, it plays with the strengths of different outlets instead of copying the same content across them: social media for interaction and speed, traditional media for summaries and perspectives. Even though there are a minor flaws (most notably, a slight tendency to cover the journalists’ trip itself rather than the voters), this is a format that uses new tools to do an old job: on the ground, door-to-door reporting, directly with the voters.