GSA's stop-the-presses moment

Well, that was a whirlwind of a Monday afternoon.

The news that Martha Johnson had resigned her post as General Services Administration administrator broke around 3:40 Monday afternoon. By that time of day, we're usually taking stock of our stories and beginning to plan out the lineup for the next day's e-mail newsletter.

But the GSA turmoil changed all that. In the days when the news media consisted of daily newspapers and broadcast, it would have been a "stop the presses!" moment. Nobody doubted that we needed to chase the story and try to nail down some information useful to our unique group of readers.

In a case of very bad timing, our GSA reporter Matthew Weigelt is on vacation this week. Instead, we put Camille Tuutti and Alice Lipowicz on the story, and I, your humble news editor, took part as well. Over the next two hours we talked to Bob Woods and Jonathan Aronie, found Johnson's resignation letter and studied the Inspector General report for details. We republished our story several times, adding detail and clarification with each iteration.

Finally, as afternoon was giving way to evening, we published the final version and called it done. Such moments can be exhilarating, and also exhausting. But these are the stories that matter most to our readers, and delivering accurate and timely information to people who want or need it is at the heart of what we do.