“For us the key is that it’s not just an engineer fixing a problem. It’s having someone who can talk to customers and reassure them about what’s going on, which is what they need most in a moment like this. Human empathy is priceless during a challenging situation and we were happy to provide.”
The Midterms are one of the biggest nights of the year in the 2026 US calendar. The day put intense pressure on newsrooms demanding both agility and accuracy to cover the outcome as the American electorate cast its ballots.
Because Trint is made by journalists for journalists it’s built for major moments like this. We understand the needs of newsrooms when a story is breaking and how important it is to have software you can rely on.
With the world watching the US Midterms, our team expected to see a spike in transcription by Trint users both in the leadup and during the big night. We made sure our customers had everything they needed for smooth and glitch-free news coverage.
“We spoke to many of our bigger broadcast and news customers in the run-up to the Midterms,” says Chester Hawkins, Senior Customer Success Manager at Trint. “Two main requests were consistent across our users: they asked us to be extra careful about what new code we shipped so that no unexpected platform changes went live before the event, and they asked us to have extra support cover in place overnight just in case anything went wrong.
“Understanding how essential transcription was going to be during the Midterms, we spent weeks making a plan with Trint’s product and support teams to guarantee the platform would be ready for the additional load of live transcriptions. Along with any last minute request a newsroom might have for us.”
Breaking news is often unplanned: a natural disaster for example happens without warning. That’s why Trint’s team works to make the platform ready year round – with strong automated testing and pre-defined alerts that wake the team up if there’s a significant platform issue overnight.
Because the Midterms are a planned event on every newsroom’s calendar, Trint’s Head of Product, Jamie Morrison, was able to work with the team to reassure customers that the platform would be reliable on the day.
“Customers asking us not to update Trint before the Midterms was an understandable concern. But a blanket code freeze would just pile up changes for after the event,” he says. “Every change introduces risk and requires testing afterwards, so rather than downing tools we asked a simple question: does this need to go out today? Around the Midterms the answer was usually no.”
“News doesn’t keep to a schedule, so Trint is built to be ready all year round. But for planned moments where we know we’ll have a higher level of activity than normal, we adjust our cover, just in case something unexpected happens.”
When election day arrived, US and global newsrooms were able to trust Trint to support live coverage with live transcription, translation and speaker recognition. We’re proud to say Trint didn’t let them down, and here’s the numbers to prove it:
“On the night itself, our customers were running live coverage at close to triple our usual peak traffic, and everything went smoothly from start to finish,” says Chester. “No outages, no complaints, and positive feedback from customers when we followed up afterwards.
“That’s really the test for us: not how things run on a normal day, but whether we hold up on the one night a year our customers can’t afford problems.”
The knowledge that a tool can be trusted will always be essential during events like the Midterms. But beyond the product, our major customers want to know that a human can be reached by email or phone should anything go wrong.
“We know how crucial reliable transcription is to media organizations on nights like these and how much they rely on their software to work throughout the biggest events coverage,” says Trint’s Technical Support Manager, Olga Dudin. “Our expertise, teamwork and commitment allow us to show up for our customers like this time and time again.”
