COVERING Election Day

Not in my experience. Deadline wasn't even pushed back for the Super Bowl, even when our area team was in it. Nor for when local D-I basketball team was in NCAAs.

 

Either that, or you're exhibiting a hard-on about sports departments.

 

And there are sports results, such as when local D-I baskeball school is on the road out of the timezone, that would be nice to get in at midnight, only time isn't extended.

 

There's the key: When they've done a good job. Is getting election results and writing stories on deadline doing a good job, or just a regular part of the job?

 

Jesus H. Christ, Baron.

If you think a damn late college basketball score is equivalent to an election result, you need to go get your money back from the school that taught you about the history of journalism. The First Amendment does not cover freedom of the press so we can get late sports scores in the paper. Elections actually matter to people, a lot, which I think you're not grasping in all of this.

As for the Super Bowl ... I don't know where you live -- my guess is Mars and I don't know what time zone that is -- but the latest the Super Bowl would end would be 10:30 on the East Coast.

 

Which is a lot of fun to fill with an 11 p.m. deadline.

Like I said, deadline doesn't get pushed back.

And when the local D-I school is in the NCAAs or playing a major, believe me, plenty of people give a shit. And again, deadline isn't pushed back.

 

You sound like a terminally negative and unhappy person.

 

That's your response? :

 

Here's the thing.

Tight deadline nights with multiple stories coming in don't really happen that often in sports.

Even likes to talk about Friday night football but around here games kickoff at 7 p.m. Assume normal running time and it is over by 9:30. If you are worth a damn, filing by 10:30 should be absolutely no problem.

If you are working desk, and you catch the copy, you should have already slotted it to the page, and if the writer hits for length, it is as easy as a color by numbers portrait to slap it in and go.

But that's 10 times a year, maybe 11 if you have a bumper crop of teams in the playoffs. Those numbers drop as the playoffs move on.

The local college might hit some weirdo ESPN2 late kick but that happens, once every couple of seasons.But even then, college football is 15 nights out of 365.

When sports guys talk about pushing deadline every night, they mean chasing a west coast score or a box.

That's far from Election Night when you have to process the results by hand because you don't get the local shit from AP, gift tabbed for you. And conveying the nuance and complexity of an election as opposed to a prep gamer that's so goddamn difficult you hired not an experienced journalist but some college freshman or high school senior to string it for you.

But sports guys do it every night, what the fuck ever.

 

I've produced plenty of sports sections by myself that included four pages of Redskins coverage off games that started at 4 p.m. or later and the deadline was 8:30. Sounds like all you do well is make excuses.

 

Hey, both news and sports can and are screwed by the facts on a regular basis. On Election Night 2000, the Herald had three different editions with three different outcomes on the cover. That's a tough night. On the other hand, Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS was also a tough night. Anybody, editor or reporter, ought to be able to switch from news to sports or vice versa and do at least a competent job.
At Super Bowl XXXVI when the Pats beat the Rams, it occurred to our editor that in his excitement, he had assigned all the sports staff to do Pats stories, and nobody to the Rams. Cosmo Macero from business, who had just been there to check out the rich shits from home at the Super Bowl, said he'd do it, went down and did a Warner story, a Faulk story, filed before deadline and went about his way. That's a pro. That's the way it should be.

 

Did he receive an email for his sacrifice?