11/18/2016

How Ohio daily newspapers covered Donald Trump's win

With Donald Trump’s victory going down as one of the biggest presidential election upsets in United States history, the Ohio Newspaper Association asked a cross-section of its daily newspaper members how they covered the election. Below are comments from different editors at these papers along with images of their front pages, special editions, and unpublished alternate front pages they’d prepared in case Hillary Clinton won.

 

Akron Beacon Journal and Ohio.com
Bruce Winges, Vice President and Editor
We held the print edition as long as we could election night. By 1 a.m. Donald Trump had 264 electoral votes, which meant if some state would come in with only 6 more electoral votes we would have a winner and be able to say it in a Page One headline. By 1:15 a.m. the total was 264 and our time was running out for print. By 1:30 a.m. the total still was 264 and we sent our front page to press.

We were able to get a full story on the results of the election on Ohio.com between 2:30 and 3 a.m. when the winner was declared.

The day after the election the Beacon Journal ran a front-page editorial (the regular A1 appeared inside) with the headline "One nation." We felt that after such a divisive election a front-page editorial was appropriate because it is time to move forward.

 

 

The Bryan Times
Don Koralewski, Editor
Here at The Bryan Times, the original plan was to do a general front page with local races and issues covering about 60-percent of the front page — with top story to announce the president’s race.

However, we were moved to do a keepsake front page — considering the historic nature of who would win the presidency. Local races and issues went inside, and the front was reserved for large images of the national winner — to include concession story. We were prepared to do two front pages. However, since contracting our printing services to a plant in Ft. Wayne, we had a solid deadline of midnight. On the edge at 11:15 p.m., we made the decision to construct a blander front page and commit to "Too Close to Call."

I think our local coverage was outstanding… too bad it was relegated to the inside.

Lesson learned — without a printing press on premises, won’t ever gamble on a keepsake edition where the story isn’t solid two or three hours before press deadline.

CantonRep.com and The Repository
Scott Brown, Managing Editor
The Canton Repository's big push on election night was social media — specifically, Facebook Live. We set up a makeshift studio in the middle of the newsroom, and our special projects editor, Todd Porter, hosted live results shows for about 10 to 15 minutes every hour on the hour starting at 6 p.m. We did our last show at 1 a.m.

Other editors such as myself and executive editor Rich Desrosiers appeared on various segments to discuss the results, plus some of our reporters either in the newsroom or via phone from the board of elections and other sites around Stark County where we were chasing candidates. We also talked via phone with an area political wonk and interviewed a local councilman who won a state House race.

Our social media editor, Laura Kessel, was active on the Facebook page while the show was on, interacting with viewers via comments and also posting links to other election coverage in the comments to try to drive traffic. We saw some boosts in our analytics and were very pleased overall with the audience for the shows and interaction we received with viewers. We're exploring other options for using Facebook Live in the future.

As far as print goes, we were fortunate in Canton in that we were able to wait to get the final result into all editions.

When AP called it at about 2:25 a.m., we already had sent two front pages to the press room — "President Trump" and "Too Close To Call." We called the press room and told them to go with Trump, and our night was done.

A third page, "Madam President," also had been built, but never got out of our A1 designer's computer.

 

Chillicothe Gazette.com and Lancaster Eagle-Gazette.com
Michael Throne, Editor
The Media Network of Central Ohio, which is comprised of 10 Gannett newspapers from Port Clinton to Chillicothe, produced a common election section that appeared in all ten newspapers. The section includes coverage of Donald Trump’s victory on the front page, coverage of state races on Page 2 and each subsequent page was devoted to results from Mansfield, Newark, Zanesville, Chillicothe, Lancaster, Marion, and Coshocton.

The papers all included a front page billboard promoting the full section inside, and all of the newspapers had an earlier deadline for the main A section, which includes the normal day’s news outside of the election.

The change was explained in a column in each paper before Election Day.

Cox Media Group Ohio
Jim Bebbington, Senior Editor
We focused more than ever on covering the election in digital. Our apps and sites were prepared weeks in advance to highlight the information we thought readers would want as voting began that morning. The day-of newsroom staffing flexed in early so that we had folks available from the moment polls opened to respond to reports of issues or just give people updates in digital about how voting was going. They shot video, stills, reported from the scenes and checked out tips throughout the voting. The reporters and editor were refreshed mid-day. Their reports were also delivered to our TV and radio broadcast teams.

As results began to come in reader interest online clearly spiked around two objects: the national map showing state results, and our data page showing real-time results. The fact that the presidential race was trending toward Trump was clear by our first print deadline, for Springfield News-Sun, but we were not able to do more than a big-type “It’s Close” headline. That stood for our second paper, the Hamilton JournalNews. By the Dayton Daily News deadline Trump was clearly headed to victory, but hadn’t won yet. We opted in print for “Trump Leads” and switched it for our epapers to “Trump Wins” as soon as he was declared. Our digital traffic throughout the day was strong, but as we have seen on any big national issue it was not quite the level that we see in off-year elections when people turn to us for the hundreds of local races up for grabs at those times.

Cincinnati.com/Cincinnati Enquirer
Carl Weiser, Government/Politics Editor
We used Facebook Live in several ways. For example, we offered a noon show in which viewers could ask questions, featuring campaign reporters Chrissie Thompson and Jeremy Fugleberg. At 7:30 p.m. we offered a show, carried on USA TODAY’s Facebook page, starring a Trump surrogate (Greg Hartmann) and a Clinton surrogate (Eric Kearney) to discuss the night ahead. We also used Facebook Live to present our election results, which did very well.

We joined  ProPublica’s ElectionLand partnership to monitor any irregularities. Things stayed calm. We also had two classes of journalism students helping us monitor polling sites and staff election night parties.

We put out a print special section Thursday on Trump’s win, since our Wednesday paper went to press before the results.

The Daily Jeffersonian
Ray Booth, Executive Editor
In southeast Ohio, we were pretty certain that Donald Trump would win our region and probably the state. That's as far as we were willing to look ahead. We were fortunate in our coverage because our deadline isn't until 6:30 a.m., which gave us time to make sure we had the presidential results in Wednesday's issue. I wouldn't say we did anything "different" for the election but just wanted to make sure we were fair and had results as accurate as possible. We did use social media on a continual basis, using primarily Twitter and Facebook.

The Lima News
Jim Krumel, Editor
Among the things The Lima News emphasized were “quick read” results. They included:

• A Page 1 map of our nine-county region that provided the presidential results from each county.
• A breakout that showed how Hillary Clinton fared in Allen County in 2016 compared to Barack Obama when he first ran in 2008; it also looked at the inroads that were made in Allen County by third-party presidential candidates this year; and it compared the results of the 2016 sheriff’s race against those of 2012. Sam Crish ran unopposed in both races but had 20 percent fewer votes in 2016 due to an FBI investigation.
• A rail on Page 1 with results from the top local races
• An “election agate page” of local results.

All of our reporters did local exit interviews throughout the area. The quotes were inserted into various stories. The Lima News went to press shortly before 3 a.m. on Election night. All editions included a Page 1 centerpiece package on Donald Trump’s stunning victory as well as an editorial.

The News-Messenger and Port Clinton News Herald
David Yonke, Editor
We didn’t do anything that unusual for coverage, but The News-Messenger story on the Sandusky County sheriff losing his bid for re-election was of great interest locally because he was indicted on 43 criminal counts in August (and is scheduled to accept a plea deal this Thursday 11/17).

For the News Herald in Port Clinton, the board of elections’ website crashed on election night but when I called they were able to send me the results by email.

The Vindicator
Todd Franko, Editor

ONA Editor’s Note: Todd Franko comments below were originally published in the Vindicator. Pictured above is the front page the Vindicator ran when the election wasn't called by printing deadline. Below are alternate front pages they prepared, including one in case Clinton won.

The Tuesday night election process kept the country guessing. It kept newspaper operations doing the same.

That is the reason for today’s printed version of The Vindicator broadcasting a “Decision on Hold” and the digital versions showing a “Decision Trump” and “He’s Hired” front page.

It wasn’t an error. It was just a reflection of the dynamic timing of Tuesday night’s historic and unprecedented election.

The difference in our publishing world between digital and print is dramatic. For Vindy.com and our social media platforms, we have the ability to make news appear within seconds of it happening.

With our printed newspaper, there has always been a multi-hour gap between when the paper is done and when it gets to your door.

Our goal is to have the Vindy at your home or store before 6:30 a.m. First it has to be printed. Then it has to be packaged. Then delivered to warehouses. Then delivered to your door. All of that is about a five-hour window normally for us.

You notice the effects of that from time to time, such as in unavailable sports scores from West Coast games.

Rarely does it cause a dramatic difference like you see today.

In The Vindy newsroom Tuesday night, most staff was gone by 1 a.m. Only a handful stayed to finish the two pages affected by who would be president.

On normal days, our last page is complete at 12:30 a.m. Presses start a bit after that, and the five-hour production begins.

We started Tuesday with a plan of 1:30 a.m. for last page — losing one hour of production time. We have a good team. It’s doable.

But we also feared a repeat of 2000 when morning newspapers across the country printed all sorts of variations from "Gore wins" to "Bush wins" to "Too close to call."

Our "worst-case" scenario, we could print as late as 2:18 a.m. and still make 6:30 a.m. happen. After all, we have a good team that can do great things.

As late as 1:45 a.m. with five staffers watching the results and waiting, we started to ponder “worst-worst-worst case” print times and other ideas.

With the numbers as they were at that point, we explored the idea of a Trump win front page — gambling that by 6:30 a.m. the race would be declared.

So just after 2 a.m., when Clinton campaign boss John Podesta came out and said a long, slow count was planned, that was our cue to start the print process and the “Decision on Hold” front page.

About 45 minutes later, when word started to get out that Clinton was conceding, it was just a confusing turn of events for most watchers.

For us, it was a conundrum. Our newspaper was on the press and getting onto trucks. After stretching and stretching, we were out of stretches and stuck with what you saw on A1 today.