Out of the void

This points out one of the sad facts of life we've all had to live with in newspapers:

The only newspaper with less genuine news than the Monday-before-the-election edition is the Tuesday-day-of-election edition, as we'll see in six or seven hours from now when the bulldog editions reach convenience stores and hawkers outside of bars. Nothing will have changed between Sunday night, when the Monday paper went to bed, and Monday night, when Tuesday's got tucked in. But across the country, tens of thousands of column inches will be sacrificed by talented, exhausted writers pumping nothingness out of the void and calling it news.

There are few things quite as useless as the Election Day newspaper. The biggest story out there is the election that we've been previewing exhaustively for weeks and weeks, but we have nothing useful at all to say about it on the day of, and we do so at great length. We report things like "Analysts look for trends" (oh, really?) and "Important issues at stake" (you don't say) and "Few surprises expected" (ho hum). Once in a while, we really go out on a limb: "Voting begins," the headline says. "Oh, my God, Martha, look at this! The newspaper says voting begins!!"

I hate to break it to the blogosphere, but until the votes are counted later tonight, Election Day blogging is pretty useless, too. "Oh, my God, look at this! Turnout has been light to moderate so far, and it's raining at Precinct 322, where the judge, Mrs. Haydon-Finch, plans to have a tuna salad sandwich for lunch!!"