Working to capture a harrowing week

The giant clock above the finish line flashes 4:09:43.

Juli Windsor, a little person with big dreams, is crossing the 25-mile mark. Even though her legs throb with pain, the Cumming native pushes toward the finish line, hoping to become the first person with dwarfism to complete the Boston Marathon.

At about the same time – and back at Mile 24 – Scott Rigsby, a double amputee from Sandy Springs, is also battling excruciating pain: His prosthetics aren’t fitting properly. His legs are badly bruised. So he decides to stop at an aid station for help.

In one terrifying instant, the day is forever shattered.

By now, we all know the sad story: Limbs and lives lost. A manhunt. Friday evening’s dramatic finale in the backyard of a Watertown home.

But what you might not know are some of the behind-the-scenes moments that come with covering a story such as the Boston bombings. Plenty of questions have been raised about the media’s handling of the tragedy.

One newspaper doctored a gory photo. Another accidentally ran one of its Boston stories over an advertisement for a pressure cooker. Then, of course, there was the inaccurate information about an arrest.

But those are debates for another day.

This story begins that Monday afternoon – at 2:50 p.m., on what had been a perfect, sun-dappled afternoon.

Early reports are sketchy at best, so much so that one newspaper runs an “exclusive” that 12 people are dead.

With so many questions swirling around, we postpone our 3:30 afternoon news meeting, and our newsroom quickly goes to work, hoping to make sense of a story unfolding more than a thousand miles away: We set aside extra space inside our A-section, and a team of reporters tries to find runners with ties to metro Atlanta, such as Windsor and Rigsby. Editors and producers post up-to-the-minute developments on our web sites. Someone begins the grim task of sorting through photos – some of which can’t be used because they’re simply too graphic.

At 5:30 that evening, we gather to settle on our front page. Deadline, after all, is less than six hours away.

It’s rare that we devote the front page to a single topic, but this is far from an average day. We clear everything off of A1 and settle on two stories out of Boston: A main story that tries to reflect the mind-numbing events of that afternoon; another that captures the reaction of metro Atlanta.

All the while, a debate of sorts begins over our main headline. Someone suggests TERROR AT THE FINISH LINE. For a while, we consider EXPLOSIONS ROCK MARATHON. But this story is about so much more. We end the evening with TERROR ATTACK RATTLES NATION.

Thus begins a dizzying week.

The death toll, fortunately, never rises above three. Pieces of information provide a clearer portrait of those who carried out evil. Stories of heroism, inspiration – and luck – began to emerge.

Daryn Kagan, one of our contributing writers, hears of Rigsby’s tale. What if he hadn’t stopped at the aid station that afternoon? Another writer learns of Windsor’s dreams to reach the finish line that afternoon. What if she had been running on the left side of the road, rather than on the right, where her family had gathered to cheer her on?

As the week winds down, it ends in the same chaotic way it began: One suspect is killed in a shootout with police. His brother is on the loose. Boston is locked down.

At noon that day – some 11 hours before we put the paper to bed – we begin sketching out a rough design for our front page. We decide to drop our rail – that’s the news summary that runs down the left column – and go with a much bigger headline than normal.

As events change, so, too, does our front page.

We begin with a one-word headline, MANHUNT. As the day unfolds, that becomes BOSTON UNDER SIEGE. That changes, too, when gunshots ring out in Watertown. For a while, everything seems unclear. Has the second suspect been captured?

Later that evening, a tweet from the Boston Police Department provides the confirmation everyone has been waiting for: “Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area. Stand by for further info.”