comm207fall06

Here's a typical election-day story that was written with the "lede-to-come," (abbreviated LTC or, more commonly, LTK). It was filed to The Nashville Tennessean's website at 9 p.m. Tuesday, when the votes were still being counted. The headline and lede are based on latest, but still partial, returns:

Ford narrows gap in U.S. Senate race

Bob Corker's lead in the U.S. Senate race narrowed to being only three points ahead of his Democratic rival, Harold Ford Jr., with 27% of the state's voting precincts reporting.

Corker, a Republican, received 51% of the vote to Ford's 48%, according to a tally by the Associated Press. Corker has led the race by as many as 10 points in the AP tallies throughout the night. However, it's not known which precincts are reporting.

Corker, the former Chattanooga mayor, and his family watched the returns in the Chattanoogan hotel in downtown Chattanooga. Ford, who served for 10 years in the U.S. Congress, watched the returns from a room in the Peabody hotel in Memphis..

Then the story switches to the "A-matter," the part that was written earlier. (In this case, you can tell because they didn't edit out the full identification of the two candidates, as you normally would after the first reference. But The Tennessean is a good paper, and they had a lot to keep up with Tuesday night. So let's forgive them.) Here's the transition where the A-matter begins:

U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. wrapped up his race for the U.S. Senate at a diner draped with Confederate flags in Jackson, Tenn., while former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker did a campaign swing that ended at a church

The two men were facing off to replace Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., in one of the most closely-watched contests in the country.

Democrat Ford held himself out as an independent-minded candidate for change, while Republican Corker touted his "Tennessee life" as a businessman and past stints in public office.

The tight match-up drove heavy turnout throughout much of the state with hour-long waits in the rain at some polling places in Nashville today.

The race has drawn national attention as one that could tip the balance of power in the U.S. Senate - and even more notice when a Republican commercial, featuring a bare-shouldered woman flirtatiously asking Ford to "call me," raised questions of race-baiting.

Until that commercial ran, Ford and Corker were tied in the pre-election public opinion polls. After it ran, Corker pulled ahead by several percentage points. It was considered racist because Ford is black, the actress shown in the ad was white and misegenation historically has been a deeply rooted issue in the state, especially in portions of West Tennessee adjacent to the Mississippi delta where within living memory a 14-year-old black youth was lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman.