Columnist Jim Slusher: Pre-frenzy musings on Election Night
Election night for editors in a newsroom - or for the network of home offices that passes for a newsroom in 2023 - is a nerve-jarring game of Wait and Hurry Up. After months of planning and organizing, the systems are completed for dropping facts and results into position so precisely that scores of simultaneously breaking news stories can be shaped, assembled, headlined and placed in the space of a couple of frenzied hours leading up to a fixed press start that must be met or papers will not get to readers on time and the whole point of the enterprise will be lost.
But in the space between the presentation of the plan (Thanks, plan author and News Editor Michelle Holdway!) and those frenzied hours, there is a worrisome gap spent poring over grid sheets, exchanging emails and phone calls, repeatedly clicking on county clerk websites and ... just ... waiting. Waiting for votes to be counted. Waiting for phones to ring, for stories to arrive. Pre-COVID, you could lurk with companions in a break room and graze through company-supplied Cheetos, cookies, Cokes, pizzas and more. Now, you have only your own kitchen and the personally supplied stocks of same-old, same-old graham crackers, potato chips and milk to pick over under the slightly bewildered, mildly respectful smirks of your spouse and kids.
You get a slightly guilty feeling. You know you have backed-up work to tend to, but you're wary to start some unrelated project, some potential distraction you'll have to abruptly discard when the mayhem explodes. You have thoughts as you dip your graham crackers, careful to avoid dripping milk onto your assignment grids, and poke around the web. Here, as I await this year's Election Night mayhem, are a few of mine.
• As we wrote in an editorial commentary a couple of weeks ago, the selection of a new Chicago mayor will have repercussions for the suburbs. But I can't help wondering with some dismay how many people will have stronger opinions and know more about that race than the race for their own town's mayor - or governing board or school board or park or library district.
• The answer to that musing may be imprecise, but the general gist was pretty obvious from the sparse showing at my local polling place. And from the disturbing number of races on my ballot that lacked enough candidates to fill the available positions.
• Never mind comparing public interest in different elections. What about public interest in different stories altogether? Yes, the arraignment of a former U.S. president was historic. How could it not be bigger news than the election of a park district trustee? And yet, I find myself comparing two scenes. One scene I can watch throughout the day of a former U.S. president appearing in court in New York City, hearing specific legal accusations against him, asserting his innocence, then a few hours later stepping to a podium 1,200 miles away before a rapturous crowd at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, to excoriate the justice system he insists has it in for him. The other is not televised anywhere. It's a Wall Street Journal reporter languishing isolated in a Moscow prison, snatched by authorities and whisked away on vague espionage charges. It's not hard for me to tell which justice system is transparent and working - for the accused as well as for the society - and which is not.
• But, yikes, we've just gotten word that the results website is down in Kane County. Time to discard distractions and join the frenzy. Wherever you are in the suburbs, I hope you'll soon know as much about your own elected town and school leaders as you know about those in Chicago. At least, we'll give you the chance.
jslusher@dailyherald.com