It was immediately obvious to both Gauen and Goodman that the story was destined for the Web. By now, the Post-Dispatch had a strong online culture, and the staff viewed the Web as the natural home of breaking news. The question was not whether to tell the story online, but how, especially given how little information they had. Traffic on the police scanners was frantic and confused. But that, to Gauen, was confirmation enough that the situation in Kirkwood was serious —and it was news. After dispatching two police reporters to the scene, he composed a brief Web update. He explains:

We didn’t say anybody was shot… I left it really in the terms that I knew it… Something to the effect of, police from several jurisdictions were responding to Kirkwood City Hall tonight on a report that shots had been fired… I’m trying to hold down the level of hysteria. It’s much easier to escalate than to de-escalate. I don’t want to be wrong.

Gauen emailed the update to the Web staff with instructions that it be posted immediately. “That was done within five minutes of the time we heard about it,” Gauen says. But another problem emerged immediately: Because STLtoday.com’s traffic dropped dramatically after the end of the workday, the paper devoted far fewer resources to the website in the evening. Gauen notes:

One of the problems with our online operation was that at night it was run by not necessarily trained journalists. They’re more clerical people who knew how to post things and who were taught how to post things off the wire… But in terms of doing critical editing or critical journalism on a deadline, they weren’t really trained to do that.

Gauen, Goodman, and Eisenhauer would have to monitor carefully what their reporters sent to the Web staff for posting. For now, they scrambled to coordinate reporters. Metro Editor Goodman decided that the police reporters on the scene should concentrate on gathering information rather than writing. He directed Greg Jonsson , a night general assignment reporter, to remain in the office and gather other reporters’ dispatches from the scene to write—as quickly as possible—a description of the event for STLtoday.com. Jonsson had worked the night shift for several years and was accustomed to tight deadlines. He was often charged with rushing breaking news stories into print in the short time period between when his shift began and when the newspaper went to press. In this case, Night Metro Editor Eisenhauer fielded phone calls and emailed relevant information to Jonsson, so that he could write uninterrupted.

But what form should the story take? Should it be a series of short, breaking updates, one detail at a time, like Gauen’s update? Was this the right story to cover with a blog? Jonsson decided simply to write the story as an article that would grow and change, with more details inserted and different ones emphasized as he learned more about the situation. He would, he says, “Write, write, write, reach a natural stopping point, send it to the web, write some more, insert paragraphs, patch and fill.” [1]

Goodman considered assigning another reporter to write the print story as Jonsson wrote the Web story. The first edition of the newspaper was due at the presses in only three and a half hours. But Jonsson felt it would be more efficient simply to rework the final version of the Web story himself for the print product. That way, reporters on the scene would not have to contact two different people each time they learned a new detail. Further, it ensured that one person would be responsible for all the outgoing information. Jonsson explains:

Otherwise, you’d have two people writing at other ends of the room, and maybe somebody’s going further than the other person thinks we should be going yet or vice versa. At least that way, there’s one person who knew where we were at each point as far as naming people or as far as different details.

As to what should go in the newspaper, Jonsson would think about it later. The print deadline was fast approaching, but the Web deadline was immediate and constant.