In Wednesday’s edition of The Daily Item, we ran the unofficial, preliminary results of Tuesday’s elections in Lynn, Peabody, and Saugus. Readers will have noticed that we ran the results again in Thursday’s paper — and they were not the same.
While the newer numbers did not impact which candidates won or lost their races, there were some significant differences. Notably, Wednesday’s paper had Nicole McClain listed as finishing second in Lynn’s city councilor-at-large race, with 3,630, while Thursday’s updated results showed that Brian Field came in second place, with 4,167. So why didn’t we run the complete results in the first place?
The answer is that we didn’t have them. During each election cycle, one of the inherent problems present in journalism becomes more pronounced. News is called that for a reason: it has to be new. At the same time, it has to be accurate. The process of counting ballots can take a long time for municipalities, and it isn’t always clear what the results are on election night.
The compromise we reach as a result is that we print unofficial, incomplete results in Wednesday’s paper, and if there are still ballots to be counted, we print the more comprehensive figures as soon as we can. This country has had elections that go on for months with multiple recounts — the 2000 presidential election in Florida between George W. Bush and Al Gore comes to mind. Luckily, Tuesday’s municipal races weren’t anywhere near as close, controversial, or contested, but we might someday see an election here that drags on for just as long. If it does come to pass, we are prepared to regularly update you with the results we get for as long as it takes for the result to be finalized.
A lot goes into printing the newspaper each day. Our reporters have to learn about what they are actually reporting on first, then use that knowledge to form their articles. Our editors look at their drafts next, fixing any mistakes or typos and clarifying anything unclear. Then, the designers have to fit the article on the page’s layout. The newspaper is then sent to our printer in Auburn, before it can be delivered to doorsteps, dispensers, and counters throughout the area.
Each of these steps have a deadline that we can’t miss. The trouble on election night is that sometimes our deadline arrives before all of the details have come in. In these cases, we have to provide all of the news that is available to us, and use the coming days’ editions to resolve any mistakes that emerge in the meantime. One area in which we admittedly dropped the ball was that we did not take full advantage of itemlive.com posting results in real time after the Wednesday paper was printed and we plan to rectify that oversight in the future.
