The Los Angeles Times had the story on Bruce Ivins, the Fort Detrick anthrax researcher you see all over our front page today. It wasn't only us who got beat. It was every other newspaper in America.

What we did have Friday, down on the bottom left of page A-7, was Ivins' obituary.

"Dr. Bruce Edwards Ivins, 62, of Frederick , died Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at Frederick Memorial Hospital. He was the husband of Diane Ivins. They were married for 33 years," the first line reads.

We came into some criticism from online commentators after we'd posted the initial wire story on our website, some fair, some harsh, others downright bitter.

How could we be beaten in our own back yard? Where was the investigation? Our entry level reporters needed lessons in knocking on doors. We were sound asleep, ridiculously irresponsible -- a rag.

Even the one guy who came to our defense had a "hidden agenda," critics said.

Hysteria and hyperbole aside, we wanted to bring some perspective to what was going on in the newsroom with this Ask the Editor column, and how we pulled away from those national papers. Even with their resources, we have a deep reach into this community, and our paths had crossed with Ivins' several times.

We first learned about the story around 6 a.m. -- the Times had dropped their article around midnight. Our Administrative Assistant Karen James, an early riser, saw it breaking on CNN and Fox News.

She called City Editor Rob Walters, who asked her to put up whatever wire copy we could find on it to our website. On his way into the office, he called Assistant Managing Editor Nancy Luse, Editor and Publisher Myron Randall, and Web Editor Jason Brennan to let them know we were in for a long day.

Walters landed in the newsroom at 7 a.m., updating the online story with a couple of paragraphs from the obit.

From there, things began to roll. Pam Rigaux was the first reporter in the newsroom at 7:30 a.m. Walters immediately dispatched her to Ivins' house on Military Road with the order to "knock on the door and stay put."

As others rolled in, they too were assigned: cops reporter Gina Gallucci-White to the courthouse; military reporter Justin Palk to work the phone, calling the Justice Department; our librarian Wendy Lerner began scouring the archives, turning up some of the very first photos of Ivins.

At 8:05 a.m., Palk faxed out a Freedom of Information Request to the FBI for Ivins' file. (He sent a second around 1 p.m. to USAMRIID for any photos they might have of Ivins.)

The information they gleaned was piecemealed to the FNP homepage.

Around 9 a.m., Rigaux called in a tip that led Gallucci-White to a peace order filed in the courthouse, with a hand-written note stating Ivins was "sociopathic" and "homicidal."

"We added our own unique reporting to the website," Walters said. "As soon as we had a new piece of information, we posted it."

Later that afternoon, Luse, who had been taking calls all day, talked to Peter Bickford of NBC 25.

"He said that he is extremely jealous of our website, it is just so good," Luse said.

Pretty soon we had accumulated a slideshow of pictures, a list of letters Ivins had sent to The News-Post, our key anthrax coverage, even video shot by photographer Travis Pratt, who with Rigaux was one of the first at Ivins' house.

The editorial team huddled at 2 p.m. to see where we were, then again for our regular 3 p.m. meeting, where we made the decision to devote the entire front page to the story and clear page A-2 for the rest.

Through the day, the national news media called, and kept calling. They wanted interviews and photographs. You may have seen the September 2003 shot of Ivins at the American Red Cross Emergency Shelter that The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and (Baltimore) Sun picked up. It may become one of the iconic pictures associated with the anthrax case.

Luse was interviewed by phone by the BBC around 11 a.m., then in front of the camera by "Inside Edition" at noon. She was most gratified by talking with a reporter from the New York Daily News, who after a day of pounding concrete and getting nowhere, said, "You guys know everyone."

By 4 p.m., we'd done away with most of the wire story we'd originally posted, consigning them to a contribution line at the end. Galluci-White's byline was the one at the top of the page.

Not bad for an irresponsible rag.

"The big boys can break the story initially," Luse said, "but once we get it we have the advantage because this is our home."

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