COVERING Election Day

News side at Herald had pizza for elections, but sports desk got pizza for the Boston Marathon. All that agate!!!

 

Now that really is great leadership. Excellent call.

 

Really. I'd love to see that brought to a head and make the execs have to defend themselves.

 

They probably would come up with some lame, "they don't normally work nights so we should feed them" excuse.

Welcome to our world.

 

We did what we always try to do on election Tuesdays - get out of the way fast as we can. Even spiked a juco basketball assignment (that I didn't much care to see us fiddling with anyway) so there would be no after-dark issues.

Closed our last page at 10 p.m. and I'm just hanging around to proof last-minute pages or whatnot.

 

I've worked lots of election nights, but this is the first time I'm the only one in my bureau. Watched hockey waiting for results, turned in my print version now waiting for more numbers to update the web.

No pizza, but I could probably have expensed a small meal if I wanted to.

 

I've never liked the whole sports vs. news debate. We work for the same damn company.

 

Let's keep the real feud going, news vs. advertising.

 

We're one of the few, the proud, the p.m.'s, so newsside is coming in at 6:30 the day after to do their stories. One of the shooters told me they're getting breakfast burritos. Again, no love for the sports guys.

 

You don't seem to have a clue how a newsroom works.

 

I have a lot to type on this but as a now news guy who just banged out a 16 plus hour day.

The only thing I have the energy to type is fuck you to the sports guys, the few who remain at least.

You guys/gals really have no fucking clue. It just mostly makes me sad.

 

Still sitting here with my thumb up my ass waiting for stories/updated voting results.

Twenty years ago, I was covering elections by waiting at the courthouse for precinct totals to be written on a chalkboard, then calling them in to the newsroom.

And we managed to get the final vote tally in the print edition.

It chafes my hide that in 2014, we have all these computers, machines that scan ballots, live website updates, etc., but the final result comes later.

Damn hanging chads ...