No election results in print

In cities across America, this morning’s newspaper told you there was an election yesterday — but nothing about it

 

My hometown paper, a PM, generally dumps the content on the website in one shot around 11 a.m., and does nothing else throughout the day. Election Day and night were no different. There wasn’t a single result posted until 11 a.m. Wednesday. Nary an update on Facebook.

The sister paper up the road, with half the staff? The Top Story section of the website was nothing but election coverage, and it was updated constantly. Every hand was on deck.

You can’t teach hustle. And you can’t teach an indifferent editor how to care.

 

To be fair, a 3 a.m. deadline would have missed many results. Because two days later, they're still counting.

 

Why on earth would anyone buy a newspaper to read about election coverage? You have to anticipate that many stories will be incomplete and the numbers won't be final.

 

I'm used to seeing (and providing, when I've been a newsie) partial numbers on the day after Election Day and having the full numbers for Thursday. But in the local paper Thursday, it's like they gave up around 6 on Wednesday. And not even agate with results.

 

I used to love USA Today's Thursday election wrap. So many random races get lost in the shuffle. The Georgia special election winner lost. The Ohio special election winner won. Kobach's loss and Scott Walker's defeat should have been huge national news.

 

Charlotte did better with election results than Thursday's NFL game.

Lead headline: "Panthers play on road"

 

Which paper?

 

This was the issue I initially took with this thread. No paper in the country had complete election results.

Though I don't care for the ridiculously early deadlines of my Gannett shop, in part because I think it neglects readers who get print exclusively, we were able to get partial results in the paper and ran a number of related stories from Election Day. We were never going to get the complete results in print anyway.