My first focused on preparations for the upcoming election (it ran the Saturday before millions turned out that Tuesday in November). I am pleased to report those preparations, a quick result in the presidential race, followed by early concession and acceptance speeches, allowed us to meet our later deadline that night.

I hope preparations for the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama will help us again tackle deadlines.

When people ask me why I became a journalist, my answer is simple: Every day brings something new. What I don't discuss is that every day also brings a set of deadlines.

We all face deadlines in our lives. Students understand deadlines for projects and homework assignments. Blue- and white-collar workers face deadlines at their work.

Copy editors face more deadlines than the average Joe. We must meet a series of deadlines each night to produce the newspaper you're reading now or to get this column posted online. If we miss any of our deadlines, the press start could be delayed, slowing the delivery process.

Let me tell you about what the news desk (copy editors and page designers) does each day.

We start work in the afternoon. One of my first duties is to attend the page one meeting, where a group of editors -- including myself and our page one editor -- determine what stories will go on our front and local pages the next morning.

After that meeting, I sort through a set of papers on my desk and hand them out to members of my staff. The papers, referred to as page dummies, show the advertising configurations for the next day's pages. The rest of the space on the dummies is our news hole.

The wire editor, who chooses and lays out the stories on the Nation and World pages, faces the first set of deadlines. Those news pages are expected to be finished first. While the wire editor works on those pages, I give a final edit to the editorial page and send it to the press.

Later, after the deadline for funeral directors to submit obituaries has passed, an editor reads them, checking for grammar and spelling issues. Recently, I noticed one obituary named the man's late wife, and later listed her as a survivor. A call to the funeral director cleared up the discrepancy (she is alive).

As the evening rolls on, our focus moves to the front and local pages. While one editor is assigned to each of those pages, other editors on the desk help in the production process. As both pages rely on copy produced by our reporters and photographers, the news desk spends much of our evening reading copy, checking photos, comparing cutlines to stories and making sure our work is accurate. Reporters' stories are edited by city editors before we see them, so what you are reading has already been read by at least three editors. I tell our copy editors that a story can be seen by 100,000 sets of eyes, so having a couple of others look it over before ink hits the page can't hurt.

Once the page one and local page editors have finished, they print out those pages to have them proofread by the desk. This is our last chance to find mistakes before the pages go to press. Some do get through, despite our best efforts. We put the paper to bed (send the last pages to the press), post the day's stories to our website and send them to The Associated Press before calling it a night.

Finally, we're finished. There's no time to rest on our laurels or sulk over our mistakes. We get to start all over again in about 12 hours.