At 3 a.m. on the morning after Election Day, as I was writing my newscasts, I noticed several tweets from former public radio colleagues who, like so many in this business, have been laid off.
In September, my former employer, New York Public Radio, laid off 14 people while another 12 took voluntary layoffs. Gannett, Time, Axios, Tampa Bay Times, and Hollywood Reporter also made cuts this year, building on the loss of 20,000 news and media jobs in 2023.
In the texts from my former colleagues, the wording was different, but the message was the same. They said it was the first election in decades where they were not in a newsroom. They were watching or listening to election night results rather than reporting on them.
“It feels weird,” one friend wrote.
I detected an underlying mood of sadness and longing in her post. And I understand it.
Elections are the meat and potatoes of journalism. A journalist’s coverage of local, state and federal races and voters’ priorities is arguably the most valuable work they can do for their community. I know I feel a sense of great responsibility that is almost as elevating as voting itself.
“Either you do election night coverage, or you don’t, and if you do it, you should do it right,” said Midday Host Jeff St. Clair, who was the voice of WKSU’s election night coverage as he has been since 2008 . “We pulled together the entire news team to coordinate coverage across the region and make sure that if anything newsworthy happened on Election Day, we were able to cover it.”
Every reporter was pressed into service, no matter their beats. Gabriel Kramer spends a lot of his time as the host of "NewsDepth," Ideastream Public Media's news show for kids. But during the early hours of Election Day, Gabe drove to several Summit County polling places and gave me and "Morning Edition" listeners live updates about the turnout and the mood of those standing in line.
Later that evening, Assistant Producer Josh Boose was at his desk in the newsroom watching the returns. He said he especially kept an eye out on the competitive races for Ohio’s 9th and 13th congressional districts, where Democrats Marcy Kaptur and Emilia Strong Sykes were seeking reelection. (Sykes won while Kaptur’s race against Republican Derek Merrin is still, as I write this, too close to call.)
“The thing about election night is, you spend hours waiting and pontificating and then there’s a solid two hours you’re busy as the results come in,” Josh told me.
I think the “hurry-up-and-wait” tension is what makes election night absorbing and even enjoyable.
“I spent some time out of the business for several years, and I really missed it,” said Josh. “I missed the mundane things.”
He said during those years, election night was like “Christmas morning without being able to open your presents.”
Like Santa Claus’ preparations for his big moment on Christmas Eve, election coverage requires months of planning by many elves in the Ideastream Public Media workshop.
We start by asking ourselves, “What races are we going to focus on? What are voters worried about? What are the changes they want to see? Who are the candidates, and what solutions are they proposing? What are they doing to win? Where’s their support coming from?”
This election season, I had the privilege of convening four voters from in and around Warren, the seat of Trumbull County, to talk about their concerns and choices. I hope you had the chance to experience “A Slice of Politics,” either on Sound of Ideas or Morning Edition. (You can check it out here.)
I spent April and May looking for engaged citizens who would be willing to participate. I attended a mental health event and met several people, including freshman Warren City Councilmember Honeya Price. She gave me a tour of her ward, Ward 6, and suggested several people to call. I attended a Warren City Council meeting and took down the names and phone numbers of several folks who were there. Ward 3 Councilmember Greg Greathouse was also a great resource.
With every interview, I asked potential participants about themselves and what their top concerns were. I also asked them to tell me what they liked about Warren. And I ended every conversation with a request: Is there anybody you know who you think might be interested in being a part of this election conversation?
I reached out to or spoke with approximately 45 people before I asked Marwan Alie, Riley DeCavitch, Paul Ringold and Julie Stout to join me at the Sunrise Inn in downtown Warren to talk politics over pizza. Owner Ken Haidaris sat us a separate dining room and plied us with a deliciously gooey stuffed deep-dish pizza (a Sunrise specialty) and a Brier Hill pizza, which Ken described as a “Youngstown-Warren thing.”
“It’s a pizza with green peppers and Romano cheese on it instead of mozzarella,” he told me.
It took hours to convert the dining room into an ad hoc TV and radio studio. Supervising Producer/Director Jason Liechti and multiple media journalist J Nungesser arrived four hours early to set up lights and microphones. J heard some static as Marwan, Paul, Riley, Julie and I tested our microphones and had to swap out two cables.
“That’s why a bring a bunch of them,” she said.
Indeed, the dining room looked like one of the equipment resource rooms at the Idea Center. There was a clear plastic box full of cables. There were nylon kits with extra microphones and headphones, along with a mini sound board, tripods, and gaffers tape.
There were also stacks of “A Slice of Politics” promotional postcards, created by Ideastream’s Lauren Green. Stephanie Czekalinski, Deputy Editor of News, passed them out to a table of about 10 men who told her they eat breakfast together every Wednesday after Bible study at their church.
“They were talking about the way the economy has changed and the way it affects their church,” Stephanie recalled. “They also talked about their political differences and what their grown children did for a living and whether their kids were planning on staying in Warren.”
Ideastream reporter Abbey Marshall took a break from her Cleveland City Hall beat to report on the roundtable itself. She sat near Chris McBride, who wrote a similar story for the Tribune Chronicle, based in Warren.
And watching it all from a two-top covered in a red and white-checkered vinyl tablecloth was Deputy Editor of News Andrew Meyer, who edited my questions, my profiles of Marwan, Paul, Riley and Julie and the roundtable excerpts that J and I produced for “Morning Edition.”
Journalists and media organizations deal with a full plate during election season. That meat and potatoes analogy I made earlier? Election night is that, plus gravy, broccoli and a slice of apple pie with whipped cream and a Maraschino cherry on top.
Election reporting is hard work. The hours are long. The pace is fast and, on election night in particular, constantly changing. The pressures are great, with so many races and issues to follow.
But the pressure is a privilege, and the meal feeds that hunger for public service that drives many journalists, even when they've left the industry.
"The Cut" is featured in Ideastream Public Media's weekly newsletter, The Frequency Week in Review. To get The Frequency Week in Review, The Daily Frequency or any of our newsletters, sign up on Ideastream's newsletter subscription page.
