Planning for primary night
And now this behind the scenes extravaganza.
We had a little meeting this afternoon in advance of election night next Tuesday. The usual suspects. Mulcahy, McCallum, Eichten along with Sara Meyer who produces Midday and has a generous helping of the brains behind these sorts of things. And news director Bill Wareham and new boss Chris Worthington along with my colleague Mel Sommer and fellow editor Bill Catlin.
Part of the tightrope act that we do is trying to figure out what's going to happen and staffing appropriately for it. OK, the 5th District congressional race and the attorney general race; those are easy calls.
Of course, the problem is a limited number of bodies to cover everything and everybody as well as the logistics of the thing. For instance, radio folks need to install phone lines -- either basic ones or souped-up ones -- at the various candidate locations. This has been made difficult this year because Mike Hatch won't say yet where he's going to be and the DFL doesn't seem to have an idea what they're doing or where they're going to be on Tuesday night either. And that's fine; they've got lots of details beyond a party to worry about. But have you ever tried calling the phone company on short notice. "Sure, we'll be there in November some time between 3 in the morning and 11 at night." This is where folks like Sara really have tough jobs because listeners expect to hear these people utter, well, completely predictable words.
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Then you've got the other stories that might develop. In Dean Johnson's district, a GOP opponent is running as a DFLer and encouraging Republicans to register and vote as DFLers. If Johnson loses, that's a story. If he wins, well, it's not really. So how do you staff something like that?
And there's Sen.. Paul Koering, the gay legislator who faces a primary challenge. If he loses, that's a story. If he wins, is it still a story? And if so, what is it? That Republicans don't mind gay legislators? Maybe. Maybe not.
What if they both lose? I happen to think it's a story about why they both lost and how that changes everything in the upcoming general election. But that's me. I tend not to give a rip who it is that won or lost but why they did, especially in the context of how it changes the subsequent campaign.
But that's the sort of thing you really can't plan for other than to be ready to throw out the plan and start over again, which is a tough thing to do at 11 or 12 at night.
Back when I produced presidential visit coverage in Boston, I would always have a reporter at the nearest hospital. You can guess why. There's this cameraman who works at the White House. When the presidential helicopter leaves, most of the crews pack up and go back inside and hit the buffet. But he keeps filming. Just in case.
Anyway, we didn't really get all the I's dotted and the T's crossed because, well, it's just not a business where you can do that. We'll just have to play it by ear on Tuesday night.
As for your online buddies. I'll be here. Our election night results program won't be ready until November so we'll just depend on the Secretary of State's Web site. But we'll grab all the speeches with the predictable answers, and post up all the stories that Laura and Tom and Tim and Zdechlik put together, go to bed and get up and see how all of you bloggers linked to an inferior story in the Strib.
Here's hoping there'll be lots of surprises.