It's 11:05 p.m. on election night. The Wisconsin State Journal newsroom has hit its first print deadline and Managing Editor Tim Kelley is burning up the keyboard posting those stories to madison.com/wsj.

We're two hours from final deadline and there are a lot of tense journalists looking at computer screens. As things go, it was a relatively quiet night. And for that I'm grateful. We had some time to think about the meaning of the outcomes rather than just reporting the facts.

Mayor Dave won with more than 60 percent of the vote. 

As I'm getting ready to go home, reporters are teasing out the meaning of the Madison city council election. The Capital Times columnist John Nichols appears to feel that losing one seat means victory for Progressive Dane, the city's left-leaning political group.

State Journal reporters see a pattern of losses over two years. Some of the races were very close. We'll have to wait for tomorrow's paper to see what sense the reporters get from their sources.

Editorial Page Editor Scott Milfred is now in the office rushing to write a late-night opinion on the local results. 

Judge Annette Ziegler's election night HQ declared victory over Madison attorney Linda Clifford for the Supreme Court at about 10 p.m. when Ziegler reached  300,000 votes.

Now the newsroom sprints to our next deadline making sure every story in print and on the web is updated and correct.

Here's the behind-the-scenes story about how the State Journal pulled together the tale of winners and losers on election night. 

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Election night is always a celebration of the journalist's craft. At its most primitive instinct, our drive to do the tough job of daily journalism begins with our passion about the voters' right to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth when they go in to to cast their ballots.

The actual night itself is a waiting game. It's a little bit like Christmas. Your memories of it are always a bit more fond than the reality. Tonight it's even slower than I remember.

It's 8 p.m. as I start to write this. The newsroom is uncharacteristically quiet. The Brewers game is on the television, the staff is stuffed with pizza we brought in about 6:30 p.m. and most of the more social reporters and photographers are out covering election parties. Even the copy desk is muted, and I am missing its usually entertaining banter about some idiotic event reported on the wires or in one of our stories. No results yet. 

This year we've had a particularly heated race for the Supreme Court with two very lovely and talented women duking it out like nobody's business. Reporter Dee Hall, another lovely and talented woman, did terrific watchdog reporting about allegations that Washington County Circuit Judge Annette Ziegler did not follow judicial rules about possible conflicts of interest. Ziegler and her opponent, Madison attorney Linda Clifford, spent more than $1.4 million and produced some truly nasty television ads. With low voter turnout expected, it may difficult to divine what voters really thought of all this. Dee is here and I'm sure she'll have important insights in tomorrow's paper. In this quiet moment, I am feeling very grateful for Dee's great work and somewhat confused on how the race got so vitriolic.

Our endorsement protocol, which stretched over many weeks and involved more than 40 candidates, gave me the impression that the city council, which has been dominated by leaders of the Left, will move to the political center. During endorsement season, the editorial board, on which I sit, chose the candidates we thought would represent voters most effectively. Sometimes that was a member of Progressive Dane, the more liberal political group in town. Sometimes it was an independent who sounded a lot like a Republican. I imagine we surprised more than a few. I'll be interested to hear from voters on whether our endorsement helped them. We don't expect everyone to agree with us. We do believe that by putting a stake in the ground, it helps readers make a choice. We did consider not endorsing in some of the city elections. But we decided that the voters are asked to make a choice, and to this point, so must we.

8:36 p.m. Assistant City Editor Phil Brinkman is now starting to surf the channels to see if there is any election news. The television is high above our heads in the front of the newsrom. I am sitting at my desk at the back of the newsroom and straining to see what he's got on. It looks looks like Dancing with the Stars.

This is the calm before the storm. We are flipping through channels, double-checking assignments, reporters are checking in with each other to make sure they have divided the territory properly. Some of them have pre-written their stories with a certain outcome in mind. This is dicey because if they guess wrong, they have to be careful to rewrite the story with the correct information. It is important that they don't start from scratch at 10 p.m.

The copy desk is moving early copy so the decks are cleared. At 10 p.m., we will have a madhouse with reporters filing stories all at once and the wires and correspondents calling in election results about school referendums.

8:52 p.m. Steve Verburg, an assistant city editor, has a plan that rivals the invasion of Normandy. And Tim Kelley, the managing editor, knows which stories will hit which desk at what time. All of this is allegedly to ensure that the presses start on time and late results are printed "on the fly". I  need to find out why we call it "fly". It probably has to do with some old contraption or part of the webbing. I may wander down to the press room now to ask someone in the desperate need to make myself useful.

In general, "on the fly" means the presses stop and a new plate with updated information is placed on the press so an up-to-the-minute page is printed. What I'm puzzling about is whether the entire press has to stop. In that case, why not yell, "Stop the presses!"

8:55 p.m. I need to check madison.com, our portal web site. John Nichols was going to blog. I bet that someone will actually read his blog.

9:04 p.m. Phones are starting to ring. I'll update this later. I hope it gets more lively around here. Soon.

9:05 p.m. Mayor Tom Clauder of Fitchburg and Mayor Joe Chase of Sun Prairie have won their re-elections. Initial reports have Judge Ziegler ahead of Linda Clifford but editors advise me that few precincts from Milwaukee or Madison have come in so we know nothing.

9:15 p.m. I have failed to find out the derivation of "going on the fly" with late news. I chased down a couple of press operators who told me there was no difference between me yelling. "Stop the presses," and me sending a page to be changed up "on the fly".

However, Pat Reardon, veteran copy editor, tells me there was a press operator in the old days called the "fly paster." This was the person who pasted the end of the giant roll of paper currently on the press to the lip of a replacement roll so the presses had a nonstop supply. Pat and I have decided that there must have been a time when the press operators would wait until the fly paster needed them to slow down or stop the press so that the pasted piece of the conjoined rolls could move through the machinery. (Are you still with me?) At that point, the press operators would have a moment to change a plate or a page, as we think of it.

9:46 p.m. Tim Kelley, managing editor, is working on three screens near the city desk. He is claiming he works faster than the computer system. I am concerned he drank too much coffee today.

9:56 p.m. Stories are starting to move through the copy desk for the first edition which deadlines at 11:05 p.m. Mayor Dave appears to have won, and Progressive Dane appears to have lost one seat on the city council. Reporters Pat Simms and Matt DeFour are caucusing to try to decide how the story for the second edition should read. Has the council moved to a more moderate position?

Several of the races are very close. Thuy Pham-Remmele may have won by only 13 votes!

9:55 p.m. Editorial Page Editor Scott Milfred is doing a great job on Ch. 27 explaining how Mayor Dave "blunted" any criticism that Ray Allen threw his way. Scott looks great. He'll come to the office soon and write an editorial for tomorrow.

10:05 p.m. The mayor has won.

10:29 p.m. The reporters are working the Dane County election web site at http://www.countyofdane.com/coclerk/elect2007b.html.

I am poring over it trying to make sense of it. You can see for yourself or read the State Journal tomorrow!   

10:50 p.m. Editorial Page Editor Scott Milfred just  rushed in, and we chat for two minutes about what he will write. He is so smart and fast. I hear him calling his wife and asking if their two small children are already asleep. I often forget how much the young journalists in my care are juggling.

11:22 p.m. The first edition papers have arrived. One is plopped on my desk. I can already hear copy editors point out misspellings on Page One.

Chris Drosner, an editor who is designing Page One tonight and keeping the copy moving at a good pace, is sitting on the edge of his seat. He is tapping his down page key as he tells me we are going "to fly" at midnight to update stories and correct errors. Then we'll have another hour to gather as much fresh news before the final 1:10 a.m. deadline. 

Keys are clacking, papers are being snapped open by eagle-eyed editors trolling for errors, copy editors are negotiating changes with assistant city editors. We've just put out the equivalent of a short novel and in another hour or so, we'll do it again.

I had a short check-in with our managing editor. It's time for me to go home. At this point, I'm just in the way! The first edition looks good but I know I will be pleasantly surprised by an even more polished edition that I'll find in my driveway at 5:30 a.m. And the web page is so fresh that it glistens. I'll have fun looking at "most clicked" in the morning. 

Good night!