I am proud of the work my staff at The Record does on a daily basis.

They work hard, they juggle a lot, and they have come a long way in the past two years as we transitioned to a multi-platform, Digital First philosophy for producing content.

In addition to their print responsibilities, they routinely shoot and edit video, live blog from events, post story updates directly to www.troyrecord.com, interact with their audience on a variety of platforms, send out text messages with breaking news alerts directly to your phones, partner with local organizations to sponsor events that benefit this community, etc.

It can be exhausting, but it's also been an exhilarating two years.

Having said all that, it's particularly nice when others salute their work.

In Metroland's "Best of the Capital Region 2012" edition, City Editor Jim Franco and Bob Goepfert, content coordinator for weekender, our weekly entertainment product, are recognized in the media category.

Jim is named "Best Print Columnist," while Bob gets the nod for "Best Print Arts Writer."

As many of you know, Jim writes our popular, political column "Talespin," which appears in our print edition on Mondays and is updated daily on our website. He is also the recipient of various awards from the Associated Press and the New York News Publishers Association.

In recognition of Jim's efforts, Metroland writes:
"We find ourselves getting a lot of enjoyment (and gleaning much useful info) from James V. Franco's Talespin column. Troy politics are endlessly entertaining, and Franco helps us keep up."

Bob, who headed up Albany's Palace Theatre for many years and who has written for The Record's entertainment products for several decades, took on content coordinating responsibilities for our arts coverage a few years ago following the death of our longtime features editor Doug deLisle. In addition, Bob writes "The Arts Whisperer" blog on our website and is an award-winning theater director.


About Bob, Metroland writes:
"Bob Goepfert's interviews and profiles get at the heart of the subject at hand, and his theater criticism is excellent. He has a lot of ground to cover, and he covers it well. A must read."

Congratulations gentlemen, and thanks Metroland for recognizing their efforts!

You could feel the excitement building in the newsroom Monday afternoon: Election Day 2010 was less than 24 hours away.

After months of candidate announcements, charges and counter-charges, primaries, press conferences, and endorsement interviews, the "Big Day" was almost here.
For journalists, news junkies and politicians, Election Day is like Christmas in November.

City Editor Jim Franco and I spent late Monday going over our "tentative" Election Day coverage plan: Making sure we had enough space in Wednesday's edition for results, checking with Chief Photographer Mike McMahon to see if we had photo coverage for all the important races, and perusing the Associated Press Election Day digest for the state and national stories we'll need for our post-Election Day edition.

Campaign staffers had flooded our email accounts all day with advisories about where their candidates would be voting, making last-minutes campaign stops and hosting victory parties Tuesday night. It was a matter of matching up reporter and photographer with the local races and leaving the state and the national contests to the capable staff at the AP.

We even came up with the answer to that all-important question: What to feed the newsroom staff on Election Night. (Pizza and wings unless some quick, healthy inspiration hits me between now and 7 p.m. Tuesday!)

Thanks to coverage support from the staff of our sister newspaper to the north, The Saratogian, it looked like we had a plan that covered all the bases.
And then it happened ...

"We should have an easy night," concluded our city editor, effectively dooming us to an Election Night of upheaval and unpredictability. Everything that can go wrong will now go wrong Tuesday night.

He made the same declaration on Primary Night in September and we were in chaos less than an hour after the polls closed. Results came in late and stories were either short or in bulletin form that required a lot of rewriting and merging of information. The Internet was slow. The Paladino victory speech photo came into our computer system 44 minutes after deadline, although we had watched the event live on television more than two hours before.

Suffice to say, it was "organized" chaos.

And now he's doomed us again.

Actually, the key to covering any major event is to have a plan, but be flexible enough to deal with whatever breaking news develops.

The Sports staff kindly got the World Series over Monday night so their task Tuesday is to get their pages done as quickly as possible and leave the late deadlines for newsside.

We have a good team working Tuesday: Copy Desk Chief Siobhan Connally will be running the dayside operation, while Night Editors Rebecca Eppelmann and Lianne Webster Kim, Copy Editor Cliff Marble and photographers Mike McMahon and Jim Carras will be joining me and Jim Franco on the nightshift.

Here's hoping for the best Tuesday night. And if all else fails, we'll put tape over Mr. Franco's mouth next year.