Election Night: Reporter's Edition

How could I not write about this? Whatever role you think the "media" had in the outcome of the election, it's all over now. Or, at least the voting part of it. And President Trump is well on his way into his first term.

An Election Station set up in the Wright, Wyoming, Town hall building.

Whatever you think of that is your opinion. But, while you are at an election watching party, or just sitting at home watching results trickle in, and believe me, this time they really did trickle in, and slow as ever, reporters everywhere were sitting in front of a computer screen trying to decide when to call their candidates.

This meant both for local and national seats.

We called all of our assigned candidates in the afternoon to alert them that we would be calling them at some point in the night. I don't know if that was warning them to be aware to have answers, but it definitely made us feel better.

Because matter of the fact was no one was going home until we had the stories about the local elections up. We also wanted to be among the first to announce the presidential race, one which many in Wyoming were keeping a close eye on.

I found myself at the Campbell County Courthouse for the primaries results. During the actual election in November, I remember arriving to work just a bit before 7 p.m. and pulled up the electoral college map that the New York Times had created to track election results. The TV was already on and election results from the East Coast had already begun to stream in.

Little did I know that I wouldn't be leaving the office until about 1:30 the next morning.

Now, every news organization has very specific and important decisions to make when it comes to elections.

As the night got later and later, we knew that we had to write up our stories at some point and that our candidates weren't going to be up for forever awaiting our call. But, sometimes taking those risks is a tough call.

I'm greatly reminded of the coverage when the Chicago Daily Tribune incorrectly reported that Thomas E. Dewey won against Harry S. Truman. it confused a lot of viewers. And , a lot like the late night we had all had waiting in the newsroom for election results, we had had to figure out when it was safe to call it, and not only for the presidential election.

Were the results minus a few precincts OK to go off of and start calling candidates? 

How long should you be waiting to call candidates? They were expecting our call because we had called them earlier in the day to make them aware we would be calling them. But as it got later and later into the night, we were wondering if local officials would be heading to bed.

I distinctly remember writing a story and calling the uncontested candidates earlier in the afternoon, that day. I called all of them all over again after the election had been called after about 1 a.m.

Once we had enough in locally, we turned our attention to the local elections. The national one was still in the works and would be for quite some time. But we still had a job to do for our local candidates.

As I called local candidates, many of them commented on the national election, which they were watching closely at the time. Once our now president, Donald J. Trump took the lead, "we seem to be doing very well," was what I heard the most.

And I had known that the majority of the county was mostly Republican far before the election. Everyone had been routing for Trump. For those of you who don't know, there are a fair amount of coal mines in Campbell County. In June and July of 2016, several of them had declared bankruptcy, and about 600 miners were let go.

Because of that, few were in favor of then President Obama. So many had to move, and just two months after I had moved to Gillette, the vacancy rate was about 29 percent.

That night was what I can only assume to be one of many, many late nights in my journalism career.

None of us went home until about 1:30 a.m. in Wyoming, about 30 minutes after Trump has reached the 270 electoral votes. And even then, I don't think any of us actually went to bed. I stayed up to watch is acceptance speech and my head didn't hit the pillow until about 3 a.m. at best. And I was back at it once again at 6 a.m. 

It was a tiring night, and while some went to bed with anguish and uncertainty, others slept with sweet dreams.

Gillette, or most of it, was certainly on the later side of that equation. In fact, we sat in the newsroom waiting to hear gunshots shortly after the election was called. They never came, but odds are that  is because the town was already sleeping, but my managing editor shared his fond memories of that exact thing happening in the past in Alaska.