Watch the Orlando Shooting Story Take Shape

Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times.

When news breaks, editors must decide quickly how much coverage to give it. Is the story important? What are the broader implications? Will the situation get worse?

In a digital age, new information comes quickly. Our job is to respond to it just as fast. Stories are updated, photos are added, details are swapped in, then homepage editors give it increasing prominence on the website and apps to cue in readers to its importance.

The GIF above shows how The Times’s treatment of the Orlando shooting evolved as we learned more and discovered the scope of the horror.

“As you can see from the GIF, it went in stages as our reporters on the ground began to understand the immensity of the tragedy,” Ian Fisher, The Times’s weekend editor, said. “The day was directed by Julie Bloom, the weekend deputy who was one of the few people in the newsroom as the story was first breaking. As the initial, sketchy details came in, she published it as a small story in the middle column. Then it became the main story on the site. Then we went to what we call a ‘banner’ headline, which goes above the picture and is usually the largest headline.