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Election night brings new challenges

Election night for the Gazette staff used to involve gathering information into the wee hours, processing it and making charts, writing stories after we had all we needed, and then putting the newspaper to bed in late morning.

Oh, for the simplicity of those days. Now, we've got Gazettextra.com, and we raise the bar seemingly every election.

For the last several elections, we've worked at getting numbers and brief stories on this Web site as soon as possible. We want people coming to us first for the results of local elections - and more.

Kyle Geissler and Jonathan Lindquist, our Web specialists, have done a great job of developing systems for posting election results on Gazetttextra.com as they become available. Kyle will be at the Rock County Courthouse tonight watching the returns and adding them to our site with a wireless laptop. Reporter Mike Heine will be in Walworth County, where primaries will whittle the candidates as the county heads down to 11 county board members from the current 25.

Overall, tonight isn't a big election night by election night standards. The presidential primary is big; the Janesville City Council primary is important; and the Walworth County Board races are ground-breaking. But the number of races is relatively small.

We'll have more to deal with in April and even more this fall. We'll learn from what happens tonight and vow to get better by April 1. Then we'll begin gearing up for the big races in the fall, culminating with the presidential contest in November. We hope to have all sorts of new bells and whistles by then, and we'll be quicker than ever with the numbers.

So check out Gazettextra.com for the latest election results and let us know how we do. We're still learning - I suspect we will always be - and we welcome your ideas.