Journalists live for high-stress, late-breaking moments.

The more unpredictable the better - that way we can write before hand about what we think is going to happen, then write about what happens and finally write about why what we thought was going to happen either happened or didn't happen.

That's a mouthful.

But we love a good story, and most good stories are born out of these kinds of moments.

Elections have become, during my short career, my favorite events to cover. We build up for weeks talking about the candidates and discussing the issues both on the pages of the paper and in and around the office. All of which culminates in one day of voting and one long night of counting.

My election coverage days have all been under the electronic voting system so the vote counting portion of the day has been relatively swift compared to the days of hanging chads and fill in the bubble ballots; however, I've covered elections until the wee hours of the morning - interviewing candidates on the courthouse lawn at midnight is a rush no one can explain.

Go ahead and laugh.

Journalists are a different breed. We feed on information - particularly information no one else has but every one wants.

A ton of planning goes into election coverage at a newspaper. It's one of the few times in a newsroom everyone jumps on one event to produce an end result. We all have election night assignments no matter what we normally cover or do in the newsroom.

The anticipation that goes along with covering an election is much like what I remember about the last day of school.

As the day goes on, the excitement builds into an all-out state of delirium by the end of the day - that's what gets us through the night.

Yesterday, we covered the polling places, we staked out the courthouse and we held our press time to make sure we could get our readers the most complete coverage of what Newton County voters had to say.

We may have been around until midnight but we loved every minute of it - just ask any one of us.

The added bonus of this election night is the impact these decisions have on the community. Sadly, even though we held the front page, I don't have the final results of Tuesday's voting.

I can't talk about the results of the election or talk about how the results of the election differ from what I expected to see - my crystal ball is much like Tuesday's skies - just too cloudy to prognosticate.

Robby Byrd is the editor of The Covington News. He can be reached at rbyrd@covnews.