Election Coverage!

Of course, election night has always been one of the busiest nights of the year for any newsroom. But before the Internet, reporters and editors would wait for the polls to close, get as many results as they could, write their stories, and go home for the night. As we know, this sometimes produced disastrous results:

But these days, the old guard newspapers — the New York Times and Washington Post — are providing real-time updates throughout the night via their web sites. The New York Times web site features interactive maps that are updated continuosuly. The Washington Post has even expanded to the mobile world — you can sign up to get text messages with election results.

I’d love to know how popular that texting service was on Super Tuesday. My guess is that people who care enough to sign up for texts would probably be in front of a TV or at their computers.

Interestingly, the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline could never happen online — it would simply be erased moments later, as the AP did when it mistakenly called Missouri for Hillary Clinton last Tuesday, and then had to reverse its call and give the state to Barack Obama. Little harm was done — in fact, I doubt many viewers will remember that mistake. A far cry from the fame (infamy?) of the image above.