Mr. Kenny: In the Trump administration, news can develop in such a haphazard way. You always have to be prepared to move, and in a hurry.

A good example is the fight that began the day after Thanksgiving over leadership at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We weren’t going to cover the initial report — that the director would step down early, at midnight — but before we were through that night we had a story that was No. 2 on the web and A1 in print. We went from zero to 60 very quickly.

All because the Trump administration did something unexpected — it made an end-run on the outgoing director by, very quietly, naming an interim chief of its own. That set up a showdown between the administration and the outgoing director. The story is continuing to play out.

But we had to assess what that actually meant. No one had ever seen a bureaucratic fight quite like it.

In New York, we’re coordinating coverage that goes in the print editions and on the home page and mobile platforms. For me, the story went like this: I called the Washington editor, who called the reporter covering Mr. Trump in Florida, who called the press secretary on duty. I called the business editor on duty, who called a reporter on her day off, who made calls to her sources. Digital editors wrote an alert that we sent to readers’ phones. Other editors wrote headlines and summaries for the web. Then, after that was done, still more editors wrote the headlines for print. We did this each time the story updated, through 12:30 a.m.

In the end, we had 12 reporters and editors involved in a story that played out over eight hours.

Q: How do you achieve work/life balance when you’re on the night shift? Or do you?

Ms. Jakes: The best thing about the night shift is also the worst: the hours. Not having to be in the office until the late afternoon freed up most of the day for me to be with my daughter, who was six months old when I started the job. That was great. Even on the mornings when I was so tired that all I could do was hang out with her and a cup of coffee on the living room rug, it was wonderful to have that bonding time.