"BUSH WINS!" the bold red headline screamed from the New York Post.

"BUSH TRIUMPHS," proclaimed The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia.

After holding out most of the night, The New York Times' Web site around 3 a.m. finally declared: "Bush Captures the White House." About an hour later, the Times' site pronounced the race "tight."

The Times said it released about 100,000 newspapers with headlines saying Bush "appears" to have won. The first paragraph said Bush "was elected the 43rd president of the United States by one of the tightest margins in history."

The Associated Press did not declare a winner early Wednesday, despite TV network projections.

In Chicago, both papers hedged their bets. The Sun-Times avoided the subject with the lead headline "Hillary Wins," and the Tribune said, "As close as it gets."

In downtown Raleigh, N.C., Clyde Wagner was scooping up copies of The News & Observer with the headline "Bush Wins." The paper said more than half the press run used that headline before it was replaced with "Bush Leads."

"I don't know if these will be collector's items, but I'm trying," Wagner said.

The premature headlines were reminiscent of the Chicago Daily Tribune's infamous 1948 gaffe, "Dewey Defeats Truman." Except this time, Gore himself conceded defeat _ giving Bush a congratulatory telephone call. He later called back to retract the concession.

"We stopped the presses, and pulled back just about all of them," said Matthew V. Storin, editor of The Boston Globe, which ran the early headline: "It's Bush in a tight one." "We had about 20,000 either on trucks or around the (loading) dock. We pulled back just about all, but there's no way to be absolutely sure."

The only things that seemed sure: a recount in Florida and a political night no one would ever forget.

"I hope it will be two-out-of-three and not three-out-of-five," CBS anchor Dan Rather said in a wry reference to the networks' twice-retracted call for the winner of the pivotal Florida race _ first giving it to Al Gore, then to Bush, before returning the state to the undecided column.

Al Ortiz, executive producer of CBS' election coverage, said the network felt when it called the race for Bush that his lead in Florida was too big to overcome. But CBS miscalculated how many Gore votes were still uncounted, he said.

"It looked like a solid margin that was going to hold," Ortiz said.

Said NBC election producer Jeff Zucker: "We made mistakes. But we made mistakes on good faith based on bad information. If you make a mistake and own up to it, that's fine."

Preliminary indications were viewers were intrigued. Based on a Nielsen Media Research measurement of 49 major markets, prime-time election coverage viewership for ABC, CBS and NBC was up 16 percent from 1996.

In Harrisonburg, Va., the Daily News-Record decided to go with the headline "Bush elected 43rd president" based on wire and TV news reports, said editor and general manager Peter Yates. About an hour later, the paper changed the headline to "Presidential election too close to call."

The Reuters news agency filed a story at 2:31 a.m. EST saying that Bush had narrowly beaten Gore.

The AP had called Gore the winner in Florida on Tuesday night but then said it was too close to call. The initial projection was based on surveys by Voter News Service of voters leaving polling places. VNS conducted the interviews for the AP and five television networks.

"By midnight we knew Florida was going to deliver the presidency to one candidate or the other, and when our TV partners called the state for Bush, the vote was in his favor," said AP Executive Editor Jon Wolman. "We saw that, too, but we also saw that some significant Democratic precincts were still being tallied, and our vote-count experts felt strongly that it was too close to call."

With Florida still in doubt, the next president remained undetermined as the sun rose Wednesday.

"We're not absolutely sure quite what to do next," ABC anchor Peter Jennings confessed at 4 a.m. EST.

It already had been a nailbiter when, shortly after 2:15 a.m. EST, the networks declared Bush the winner in Florida _ and thus the nation. But by 3:30 a.m. EST, NBC's Tom Brokaw continued to wonder aloud if Florida, where candidates were separated by only a few hundred votes, was truly a lock for Bush.

"That would be something if the networks managed to blow it twice in one night," he said. Soon after that, all the networks declared Florida too close to call.

For viewers, this was edge-of-your-seat suspense that Hollywood couldn't have improved upon.

As the evening began, Florida stood as a key state for Bush. But at close to 8 p.m. EST, the AP and television networks forecast Gore the winner of its 25 electoral votes.

Rather soon was calling Bush's national prospects "shakier than cafeteria Jell-O." ABC's political commentator George Stephanopoulos noted that Gore in the White House would pre-empt a presidential bid in four years by New York Senator-elect Hillary Clinton (whose own victory wasn't even clinched yet).

But two hours later, Bush appeared on TV screens saying he wasn't giving up Florida. By 9:55 p.m. EST, CNN had taken back its projection that Gore had won the state. CBS quickly followed, then NBC.

"If you're disgusted with us, frankly, I don't blame you," Rather told viewers. Over on CNN, anchor Judy Woodruff turned to her colleagues and said, "Could you pass the crow?"

Just before ABC signed off its coverage around 5 a.m., viewers got one final unexpected sight: A studio light burst into flame, then was extinguished by a staffer. Jennings barely missed a beat.

It was that kind of night.

(Copyright 2000 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)