Nights like last night are a vivid reminder of why I got into the newspaper business.

A tremendous rush overcomes the newsroom when news stories break and there’s hardly a larger news story than the election of our next president.

It’s funny to watch election news evolve throughout the day. As the ballots are tallied at 7 p.m. across several time zones, winners are proclaimed. White states turn red or blue. I like to sit back and watch the television stations duke it out over who can get the information. In most cases, they all jump the gun too early on some piece of information and have to back over it at least once during the night.

As those ballots continue to come in and other state returns are counted, the scales tip back and forth seemingly every few minutes.

This year’s election was one of the most hotly contested in years. Early polls showed Obama as a clear favorite. Later polls showed McCain closing the gap to nearly nothing and after last night none of that really mattered.

The entire Demopolis Times newsroom was gathered around our Associated Press wire last night as updated story after updated story moved. As of mid-night last night, we ran with the most current story and we feel that it will likely be the final word on the matter.

There may be a litany of appeals, recounts or contesting of ballots. As of last night that was not known. Typically such disputes don’t come to light until several days later.

In any case last night’s election provided a much-needed shot of adrenaline to our staff. There’s nothing like a good booster shot of news to get your blood pumping.