News-Record.com

Because the news business is so competitive, it's rare for an editor to announce publicly what the paper is going to look like three days before it is even published.

But, at the risk of getting tossed out of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for revealing trade secrets, I'm going to tell you what we hope to do with Wednesday's front page.

The day after Election Day is one of the few days in which we know in advance with a high degree of confidence what stories will dominate the page. We just don't know what they're going to say.

Because dozens of stories will break between 9 p.m. Tuesday and 1 a.m. Wednesday, we must be prepared. Editors have met several times over the past two weeks to plot the content of the Wednesday paper. We've talked about how races will be covered, how many additional pages we will add and how far back we can push deadlines.

But Page One -- our face to the community -- got the most attention.
Traditionally, the front page on election Wednesday is filled with stories: the results in the race for the presidency, the governorship, the Senate seat and whichever local race is most significant. The page is newsy, informative and safe. It's also predictable.

But the presidential campaign this year has been as safe and predictable as a swift boat ride down the river. Where else can you get Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" calling out Tucker Carlson on CNN? Or daily coverage of the mysterious bulge on President Bush's back?

The time is clearly ripe for a different kind of front page. Here's how our thought process went:

Our elections editor, John Nagy, first proposed that we take a fresh approach. Let's reduce the number of stories on the front, he said. While all the elections are important, only one has divided the country into blue and red, flummoxed the pollsters and got everyone talking about the explosives HMX and RDX as if they were demolition experts.

Ben Villarreal, the editor in charge of our page designers, suggested we place only one story -- the presidency -- on the front page. Or better yet, no story; just a large photograph of the winner with a headline.

That idea of designing Page One like a Time or Newsweek cover caught on. If all goes according to plan, the front page will feature a headline and a dominant photograph of the winner, stretching the width of the page and reaching past the fold.

At the bottom of the page, short descriptions of other races will direct readers to full articles elsewhere in the paper.

It would be a special edition for these unusual, divisive times. The front page would instantly telegraph who won and be a keepsake. All the election coverage of the races would be in the paper, with full pages devoted to the presidential, gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races.

All the planning in the world, though, won't make it simple. Here's what needs to happen to make this work.

First, we need a winner. No Florida funny business. Hearts will sink in newsrooms across America if Florida's secretary of state appears on camera Tuesday night.

Second, we need a winner by midnight or 1 a.m. While most of the news department would wait until Easter to get a winner, we understand that readers expect the paper to be there Wednesday when they get up for breakfast.

Third, we need a bit of serenity in the rest of the world. There are no guarantees when it comes to news. I can think of a few news events that could crowd onto the front page, but most are tragedies and are best left unimagined.

If the nation's vote tabulators aren't on their best behavior and don't get us a winner in time, we will drop back to a front page that will reflect the day's news slightly more traditionally.

It's also unlikely that we'll have a winner early enough to do this in all our editions, so some readers will get a different front page.
But these are just plans, which can go awry for all sorts of reasons. Unpredictability is one of the thrills of being in the news business.
My guarantee to you, though, is that we'll have complete coverage throughout the paper of the local races and the most significant national ones.

A final note: The quickest way to get the returns will be online. We'll have people monitoring and filing immediate returns. Find them in real-time Tuesday night at www.news-record.com.