News-Record.com

Four years ago on election night, editors and reporters crowded around
the televisions in the newsroom, watching the various network anchors
report the returns.

It was 2:15 a.m. Wednesday. Our local election stories were written and filed, the pages laid out. Everything was ready to go. Almost.

Like the rest of the nation, we were waiting on Florida.

Unlike everyone else, though, we couldn't turn off the TV and go to bed, safe in the knowledge that it would all be sorted out in the morning. We had a paper to publish, we were an hour past deadline, and they couldn't count in Florida.

Those are the times that try a newspaper editor's soul.

It was an exciting evening. We had a new governor, lieutenant governor
and some new county commissioners.

But the main event was a cliffhanger. The Associated Press -- our main
lifeline for national elections -- was quiet, waiting. No "vote
projections" based on exit polling for it.

We couldn't wait much longer and get the paper to your homes before
breakfast. But none of us wanted to publish a paper without a winner.
It would be irrelevant. Readers would read "Bush, Gore wait" in our
paper while morning television was interviewing the winner.

Or so we thought.

Then, at 2:20 a.m. the networks called it for Gov. Bush, but the AP and our other news wires remained resoundingly silent. We couldn’t wait any longer. I told Mark Sutter, our Greensboro city editor, to start writing off the television report.

Here is his first paragraph: "George W. Bush was elected the 43rd
president of the United States, defeating Al Gore and ending an
agonizingly close election Tuesday, according to TV network
projections."

The headline read, "Bush Prevails."

My wife woke me the next morning -- well, after three hours of sleep -- as Katie Couric was saying something to the effect of "not so fast." And my stomach flipped. You all know the rest.

My mistake: I trusted television polling.

How stupid that sounds now.

We weren't alone. The papers in Raleigh, Winston-Salem and High Point
all bannered "Bush Wins." But that didn't give me any comfort then. Or
now.

Given that this year's presidential contest appears to be as close as it was four years ago, we could very well face the same quandary.

Election officials across the country say they've improved their
balloting and counting systems, but still. Stuff happens. Just Thursday, we published a story out of West Palm Beach about a computer crash that forced the postponement of a test of new electronic voting machines.

Do we call the winner? The answer, of course, is no. We learned our
lesson.

As it turned out, the "Bush Prevails" headline was correct. Personally, I'm glad that we didn't trumpet a Gore victory. Some readers might have accused us of having a Democratic bias.

On another slightly embarrassing note, over on page H3, columnist Ed
Cone writes about our Web logs. Putting aside the interview with me, I
do encourage you to check out the blogs at www.news-record.com. If
you're interested in journalism, local government, sports or just the
offbeat, there's a lot of information. By the way, we're starting a
fifth blog this week on local education called The Chalkboard.

As Ed says, we're trying to change your relationship with the newspaper. The blog format allows you to conduct a personal and public conversation about, well, about anything. It's essentially a live, online discussion with people in the Triad and around the world.

And best of all, it's fun.