News-Record.com

Ex-journalist Nancy Nall has as good a description as any I've read of what it's like to work for a small or medium-sized American newspaper on Election Day. She nails the details right down to the company-bought pizza in the newsroom.

Problem is, because I'm covering the City Council meeting so that Margaret, normally your intrepid city-government reporter, can report on the bond referenda, I'll be over at the Melvin Municipal Office Building and Nail Salon from about Pizza Minus 3 Hours until around 11.

This is tragic.

I’ve offered a bounty of free soda to anyone on the city desk who will save me four slices of Meat Lovers and/or Pepperoni 'n' Mushroom. The only response I got was from the government editor, Eddie Wooten, who’s running a marathon on Sunday and said he’d fight me for 'em because he's carb-loading.

Being reasonable, I said I’d rip his arm off and beat him over the head with it to get those slices. But I also pointed out that because he’d be lighter and be getting blood transfusions and IV fluids between now and Sunday as a result, his time should improve and so everyone's a winner.

For the first time since -- no kidding -- 1978, I'm going to be somewhere other than in a newsroom or in front of a TV on a federal-election night. Massive issues are at stake locally and nationally, and I’m gonna be in a room with no wireless [to clarify, the room might or might not have wireless -- I don't know -- but I almost certainly will not], listening to a discussion of the merits of Office-Institutional vs. Commercial. Granted, 360 or so nights out of the year I'm perfectly happy to do this because I'm a policy nerd like that. But Election Night is not one of those nights.

But that's why I get the big bucks. Or, as Nance says, "Small-market journalism is a study in self-debasement." Not that I wasn't already pretty debased before I even got into this racket.