COVERING Election Day

We (and by that, I mean I) had four local council seats open, but only one was contested and that was a foregone conclusion. One state senate race, one state house race. Results were about 40 minutes late being posted, which was all sorts of awesome. Once initial results came out, immediately put them on Facebook and Twitter. Then quick story with initial results. Then tracked down where the winners were for photos and interviews, called the seven other people, updated the initial story with quotes and did another round of Facebook/Twitter. Print version will have two stories (local races, state races/state measures) with fresh pics and more quotes.
Boss didn't even bother coming in tonight. And I've yet to have election night pizza, which kinda irks me. I believe I'm 0-for-6 now.

 

I was just gonna post a thread about Election Day pizza when I saw this thread.

Our paper gets pizza for everyone working that night -- news desk, sports desk, photo, web, part-timers, if you're there you get pizza. Most of the news desk doesn't treat sports like crap when it comes to the pizza, but there are always a few who -- even though they didn't pay one cent -- act like sports has no right to any of it. Then they make snide remarks as we're get our slices.

On the flip side, if sports ever has food these same people believe they're entitled to it. On one occasion, a co-worker actually bought pizza for everyone in the sports department and immediately people from other departments were circling like vultures. One guy from the news desk got pissed off that he wasn't getting any pizza and actually said that sports shouldn't get Election Day pizza then.

 

Most of the election stuff here now is computerized.
Newspaper deadlines? The results are all in by 9:15.
Plenty of time for pizza.

 

I was a newssider most of my career. I never ate the pizza, just so I wouldn't have to listen to sports people whine about it.

They sure as hell weren't bitching and moaning about news' inability to work on deadline when they asked me to pick up a few Friday night football pages every goddamn week.

 

You just came screaming out of the womb ready to punch deadlines right in the pussy, didn't ya?

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Really? They couldn't handle it? Puff yourself up there, buddy.

 

I helped where I could yesterday, helping produce videos for the newsroom, then laughed at the stress knowing the daily grind we have in sports. Our news editor, a former sports guy, told us sports siders to get it out of our system early, so we did.

 

Postscript: Upon further review, our "no pizza for the sports desk" edict was overturned. We also moved up sports deadlines to clear the decks for late election coverage, and several sports copy editors pitched in at the end of their shifts and edited election files (for which the news desk chief expressed his appreciation).

 

What's this? Teamwork? We'll have none of that here!

I mean, next thing you know we'll have Democrats and Republicans working together.

 

Really? They couldn't handle it? Puff yourself up there, buddy.
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Not talking about myself. Very hard-working colleagues. A lot of great deadline work while spending little time talking about how tough they have it.

 

Covering an election, or a fire, or a murder, on deadline is much harder than covering a few football games on deadline.

 

Tough thing about covering elections now — besides my earlier rant about our county's slow-as-molasses posting of vote totals — is you don't get as much election night reaction/emotion from the candidates.

My first few years in the biz, election night parties with candidates were PARTIES. We're talking two-fisted drinking, drunken arguments, great gossip a-plenty. Phones in the backroom of bars/restaurants ringing with results from the courthouse, and great reaction photos when results were updated/announced.

In 2014? Candidates huddled over laptops or peering at gadgets, often in private homes rather than in public eating/drinking establishments. Or there's a formal, totally-scripted political party function in the bigger cities, where you get a canned speech and posed family pictures on the podium.

It's almost as boring as watching Republicans sweep every office worth having in Idaho ...