Why did the Tampa Bay Times reprint a poster page after Donald Trump won the presidency?

An immense amount of planning goes into covering Election Day.

So let me take you behind the scenes as we readied to cover one of the most consequential elections in our nation's history.

And we'll get to that moment when we published, and reprinted, a front-page Extra edition poster that some readers really wished we hadn't.

It starts with "B matter."

Allison Ross, our assistant managing editor for local news, crafted a comprehensive plan that she'd ironed out with other editors to get our stories moving — long before polls opened. Dozens of reporters, photographers, editors, designers and engagement producers knew their assignments and were getting their advance work completed while making Election Day arrangements. Roughly two-thirds of the newsroom participated in our Nov. 5 coverage.

All of this happened less than a month after a gigantic steel construction crane crashed into our building, rendering the newsroom uninhabitable. Most of us worked from home.

The B matter arrived the week before the election. B matter is newsroom lingo to describe the background that goes into election stories.

Newsrooms assemble this material, often with three potential tops or "ledes," to be able to move as quickly as possible with complete stories on a tight deadline.

It explains how 750- to 1,000-word stories can be published mere seconds after news happens.

I spent a good part of the weekend before Nov. 5 poring through our B matter. The 12 stories that I reviewed — everything from the Hillsborough County state attorney's race to the presidential election — had versions of both sides winning. A third alternate top had each race too close to call. Only one version would ultimately be published, of course. A good portion of this pre-written material would be for naught. On election night, this dance requires careful final editing.

Just as we prepared alternate versions of each story to cover any eventuality, we built alternate "poster pages" that would become the front page of an "Extra" edition when we knew who was going to be the next president. Our assumption was that any Extra pages could be finished in the middle of the night or possibly the next morning and would serve as an updated version of the e-Newspaper.

On rare occasions, we have created special poster front pages for the e-Newspaper that ultimately appeared in the physical newspaper. It happened when the Lightning won the Stanley Cup, twice, and when the Bucs won the Super Bowl. Because the news occurred on days we didn't deliver a newspaper, we reprinted the front pages later. Readers have told us that they like to collect these momentous front pages.

Heading into Election Day 2024, this was the plan: No matter who won, we'd reprint the Extra front page if we couldn't get the actual news into an edition that we delivered to your home.

Indeed, we posted the Extra pages around 6 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 6 after Trump had been deemed the winner. We scheduled the front page to run inside the Sunday paper. We heard from a few readers who complained that we didn't treat Biden the same way in 2020.

But there's a key point of distinction. Joe Biden emerged as the winner in 2020 four days after the election. On Saturday, Nov. 7, he secured the necessary electoral college votes. Since we could put the news in the printed newspaper, there was no need for a special reprint.

This was the front page that appeared on Nov. 8, 2020:

I'm sure many readers kept that front page, while others couldn't have sent it any faster to the recycle bin.

That's politics in America.

Regardless the outcome on Nov. 5, we were determined to publish a poster page and make it available to readers in print.

Designer Beth McCoy created two options.

You saw the Trump version that ran.

This was what Beth got ready if Harris prevailed:

Should we have reserved this poster treatment only for a Harris victory? You could argue it would have been a more historic moment if the nation had elected our first woman president. But it's a big deal either way.

In the end, it's our job to report the news fairly and accurately. On Election Day, there will always be winners as well as people who are unhappy with the outcome. That's the nature of our political system. And we'll keep documenting it the best way we can.