On the evening of February 7, 2008, a City Council meeting was beginning in the quiet St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, Missouri. As the Pledge of Allegiance concluded and Mayor Mike Swoboda called the meeting to order, Janet McNichols, a freelance writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper, readied her notebook. It was shortly after 7 p.m.

Back in the Post-Dispatch newsroom minutes later, police scanners crackled to life with frantic reports of shots fired at the Kirkwood City Council meeting. Reporter Greg Jonsson got through to McNichols on her cellular phone—she was unhurt, but badly shaken, and had seen two people she knew shot before diving under her chair to await what she was certain would be her own death. She had recognized the voice of the shooter over the continuing sound of gunfire—he was an acquaintance of hers, and he frequently attended City Council meetings. His name was Charles Lee Thornton, known in the neighborhood as Cookie. He had screamed about shooting the mayor, whom McNichols now feared must be dead, before being shot himself by police. It was all over in less than two minutes.

As the only major local news organization with a reporter on the scene, the Post-Dispatch had exclusive access to a major story. The newspaper’s website, STLtoday.com, seemed the obvious place to break the news, but editors and reporters would have to make rapid decisions about how best to use their information, and how to tell the story in a manner both thorough and responsible. Their main source was one of their own reporters, but she was also a stunned eyewitness to a shooting rampage. How much should they rely on her account?

Editors immediately dispatched staff to several sites: to Kirkwood City Hall, to await official police statements; to the hospital, to try to determine the status of the victims; and to the shooter’s Kirkwood home, seeking family members who might shed light on why Thornton had killed. Reporter Jonsson remained in the newsroom to gather the details reporters phoned in and write a description of the events; he updated his story dozens of times throughout the evening as he learned more. STLtoday.com stayed well ahead of local television stations in breaking the news—an area where the print newspaper usually lagged far behind. Television reporters, stuck behind police barricades blocks from City Hall, resorted to repeating facts first published on STLtoday.com. Meanwhile, official police sources remained silent as to the number, identities, and status of the victims.

The Post-Dispatch was in an unaccustomed—and uncomfortable—position as the sole judge of which details of the shooting to make public, and when. Television news had long been the venue for breaking stories; the newspaper had a well-established role providing next-day context and analysis of the news. Though Post-Dispatch editors and reporters had moved toward breaking more stories on STLtoday.com in recent years, this was one of the biggest stories yet to go first to the Web. Editors knew that the impact of the choices they made would be keenly felt in Kirkwood, a small community unaccustomed to violence on such a scale.

A crucial question editors had to consider under the constant deadline pressure of the Web was whether to name the victims—five, not including the shooter—especially since McNichols could not verify which ones were dead. Should they wait for official confirmation of their names? What was their responsibility to the victims’ families? No less pressing were practical questions about how to tell the story. What would be the most effective online presentation? Should they hold information back for the next day’s newspaper, given that it was unlikely television would beat them to it? Or were they obliged to release details as soon as they were confident of their accuracy?

They also had a newspaper to publish. Their evening deadline was fast approaching: First editions had to reach the printer by 10:30 p.m., and the final edition had to be complete by 12:30 a.m. But what was the newspaper’s role now that the details of the shooting had been well publicized online and on television? How could the paper best serve all of its St. Louis audience— both those who had learned of the shooting immediately after it happened, and those who would pick up the Post-Dispatch the next morning with no knowledge of the tragedy?