Election Night Pizza

Not being in the business, I was an election judge yesterday. We had ham, olive, sausage, greenpeper and mushroom.

 

After 10 odd years in sports, I did my first election night in news last night.
Doing a HS football Fri. on AM deadline is much tougher, although we're a PM during the week.
There are similarities between both depts. The key is to understanding how the other does their job.
We have a small staff and for some reason, didn't order as many pizzas in past, so after I had 2 slices at 7 p.m., I went for another at 9:30, and nothing was left.
Oh well.

 

Always interesting to see reporters saunter in from their election posts, grab a few slices and a beverage, take a walk around the building spinning stories about their night, then sit down and start writing.
Being in sports, I can honestly say most of the guys in my shop don't even take a pee break when they are coming in from a game.
Basically, it goes like this:
desker: Who won?
writer: Podunk 14, Podunk County 7
desker: I need 350 words.

 

We're allowed pee breaks?

 

Got Day After Election Night pizza. Not bad.

 

Was my first thought too...

 

Difference between football Fridays and an election is this:
-- You get 10 football Fridays per year, one right after another. Week 1 is a zoo, Week 2 can be a little nutty, but the other 8 usually flow fine, once you have the routine down.
-- Elections happen twice per year, and big ones (if you're lucky) happen once every two years. No way to get into a rhythm of how to deal with everything.

 

Or you could be like our paper, which switched editorial and design systems, oh, around Week 3.

Flowing fine in Week 8? Eh, sure. ... Routine? Yeah, still a work in progress.

 

Does any newsroom ever have a successful pizza order? It seems every place I've been whoever orders gets relatively equal portions of pepperoni, Canadian bacon/pineapple, cheese, veggie, etc. And what always happens is the first two are gone in about 12 seconds and at the end of the night there are still veggie and cheese pizzas sitting there with a slice or two gone.

 

That's because the vegetarians whine that they won't eat anything else, so the orderers get a bunch of stuff for them. Then the veggies eat one slice of a pizza then go back to their font-finding and hot herb tea.