I love the smell of congealed mozzarella in the evening. It smells like…democracy.
With Georgia’s primary election coming Tuesday, my colleagues and I have put the finishing touches on election night coverage plans.
Our goal: giving you coverage that’s both up-to-the-minute and comprehensive.
We’ll give you the vote tallies with urgency on ajc.com, our free website, and on myajc.com, our premium site, if you’re a subscriber.
On MyAJC.com and in print you’ll get deeper coverage: we’ll explain what it all means and what’s next.
Slow vote counts and deadline pressures make election nights a big challenge for our staff. Here’s a peek at how we do it.
Hint: The key is pizza.
First, everything starts with our Senior Editor/Politics, Susan Potter. She spends months planning election preview coverage, then turns her attention to planning for election night.
Job one: determine which races we will focus on.
This time, we’re devoting the most resources to the hotly contested Republican primary for a coveted seat in the U.S. Senate, which includes U.S. Reps. Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey and Jack Kingston; former Secretary of State Karen Handel; and high-profile businessman David Perdue.
We’ll have reporters at the election night gatherings of each candidate, along with another reporter with the GOP winner’s likely Democratic opponent, Michelle Nunn, daughter of retired U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn.
Having reporters with the candidates helps us write about spontaneous expressions of surprise, exhilaration, disappointment. We’ll also have multimedia photographers among the campaigns, making a record of those moments through pictures and video.
“Mostly it’s a lot of waiting for results, but there’s a lot of anticipation,” said AJC political writer Greg Bluestein, who spent the 2002 and 2006 election nights with Gov. Sonny Perdue’s camp and now covers Gov. Nathan Deal. “Then there are those moments of excitement or when the campaigns are crestfallen, and you want to capture that.”
We’re also covering Georgia congressional races. We’ll have three reporters monitoring the race for U.S. House District 4, in which Rep. Hank Johnson faces a tough challenge from longtime DeKalb County Sheriff Tom Brown. There’s no Republican running, so the race will be decided Tuesday night.
Then there are dozens of races to decide who will represent metro Atlanta in the state Legislature. It seems unlikely that the balance of the House or Senate could change – both are solidly controlled by Republicans – but we always keep an eye on that.
That’s a lot.
But there’s more.
In local politics, some county commissioners and school board candidates are running for election, too. Truth be told, those politicians may have more influence on your life than national or state representatives.
Covering those races is no small enterprise.
At the state and federal levels, we rely on outside sources for vote results. The Secretary of State’s office and Associated Press keep tallies we monitor.
But on local races, we need reporters to be in elections offices across metro Atlanta to gather the vote totals themselves.
It’s a major endeavor, but fortunately we have help. Our Cox Media Group partners at Channel 2 Action News will share the load with our staff and, together, we’ll keep the vote counts and will constantly update ajc.com with fresh results on those races.
Back in the AJC newsroom, reporters will take information from their colleagues in the field and update stories for our websites and the newspaper. Other staffers will keep our social media followers and fans abreast of the latest via Facebook and Twitter.
I’ve worked election nights in Atlanta and other cities since 1990, and in every newsroom early in the evening there’s always a sense of excitement – it’s finally here! - mingled with boredom as early vote counts slowly trickle in.
Finally, the trickle becomes a torrent, winners are declared, and reporters and editors must work quickly and accurately on tight deadlines to get stories written and final results posted, often near midnight or beyond.
During the 2000 presidential election with its hanging chads and unknown outcome, I worked till 4:30 a.m.
Such late nights make it challenging to get the final results into the newspaper. But you can rely on ajc.com for the latest. If you prefer a newspaper-style format, we update the Today’s Paper app for iPad long after the printed newspaper goes to press. You automatically get access with your AJC subscription. If you want a really detailed look at results the next day, check out our MyAJC Interactive Analysis.
What fuels our team through those long nights?
Pizza. Well, that and our obligation to public service.
Pizza is an election night tradition in newsrooms. Leftovers from dinnertime can still be fairly appetizing at midnight, even if the sauce is cold and the cheese is hard.
One year we tried to serve our staff more upscale fare. There was nearly a revolt.
I love election night. Sure, I’m sleep-deprived the next morning, when we’re back at work analyzing what happened at the polls, why it happened and what it means to you.
But it’s OK. The role I get to play in reporting on the democratic process is worth a little lost snooze time.
