eporting on this US election was always going to be different. Not in our lifetimes have we ever seen anything like Donald Trump – and not in a generation have we seen anything like the Covid-19 pandemic. With offices still locked down, those of us in New York City stayed connected online when otherwise we might have sat together in a newsroom with regular deliveries of pizza and coffee throughout the night, waiting for developments. As it turned out, it was lucky we didn’t waste all our pizza and coffee budget on one marathon 5pm-to-5am stint last Tuesday, because we wouldn’t get a definitive projection until Saturday lunchtime – and we’re still waiting even now for Trump-backing Republicans to formally accept the result.
So it was that New York reporters and editors like me, who had expected a long couple days followed by some time off, soldiered on and on into the night through all of last week. At one point, results in Pennsylvania and Georgia got so close that we each went to bed at midnight and set alarms at different points throughout the night, texting each other at 4am and 6am to say: “Nothing yet.” When it got to Saturday morning, I was getting a distinct “Al Gore vs George W Bush” feel about the whole thing, and had resigned myself to the idea that we wouldn’t know who had come out on top until at least December. “Mark my words, it’ll be Christmas Day,” I muttered darkly to E, who mutely supplied me with another jumbo pack of sour gummy bears to get me through the next few hours.
People were jumping up and down, doing thumbs-up signs to each other, and saying, ‘We did it! We did it!’
