Journalism at UMD

. For the town of Little Falls, the morning of June 24, 2008, when Gordon "Gordy" Wheeler walked into the Little Falls courthouse, entered the county board meeting taking place, and took seven of the rooms' inhabitants hostage, was that instance.

"Things like this don't happen in Little Falls," said Curt Hanson, the vice president for donor services at the Initiative Foundation in Little Falls, told the Morrison County Record. "It makes us sound like other places we read about."

While the incident started to unfold inside the Government Center's walls, no one outside of them knew what was going on.

Karla Montag had no idea what was going on until she and her coworkers, who worked at Hands of Hope in the Historic Courthouse right next to the Government Center, noticed large crowds of people leaving.

"My father, Duane Johnson, is a county commissioner and I saw him outside in the crowd. I called my mother to see if he had called her to tell her anything, but he hadn't," Montag said, "He must have called shortly after I called her because a couple minutes later she called me back to tell me what he had told her. That's when I knew what was going on."

The rest of Little Falls wasn't as up to date as Montag. They didn't have the family ties to the building like she did. So when helicopters from WCCO and other TV news stations started circling the air space above the Government Center, that's when the public started to grow concerned.

One of the first places many went to find information was to the Morrison County Record's website. But when they got there, no information was to be found.

"We didn't know what was true and what was a rumor, so we went to work verifying before any information went up," said Morrison County Record editor Terry Lerhke.

It wasn't a matter of having no or little information. It came down to sorting out what was indeed factual and what was rumor flying from mouth to mouth.

"The area the Morrison County Record covers is a relatively small community. Little Falls is an even smaller town within this already small community, meaning everyone already knows what's going on," said Morrison County Record reporter Matt Perkins.

It was a tough choice for Lerhke to make. Calls from concerned citizens kept the phones off the hook.

"We had to keep telling them the same thing. We told them what we did know, what was indeed fact and verified by the police, but after that, we were in the same boat as they were," Lerhke said.

Despite the uproar from residents wanting information and wanting it right away, Lerhke stuck by her decision to only post online what information had already been verified by at least one source, if not more.

"Sometimes, it felt like everyone knew what was going on, except us, the newspaper covering the story," said Lerhke. "The difference is we wanted the facts, not gossip."

The first online update went up about two hours after Wheeler took the board room and its member's hostage.

Ironically, the Morrison County Record had a reporter inside the board room covering the county meeting when Wheeler pulled the gun out. According to the article the Record printed days after the incident happened, Wheeler told Kyle Kuphal, the paper's reporter to run.

"Kyle (Kuphal) became our eyes and ears of that room while he was there," said Lerhke. "He was physically in the room so he saw what happened first hand."

Along with Kuphals' account of what happened and the accounts of those who were also held hostage, the Record was able to piece together how the situation unfolded itself.

At approximately 10:22 a.m., the police department received a phone call that a gunman was holding members of a commissioner's board meeting hostage, according to the short update the Record put up online.

Wheeler walked in midway through the county commissioner's board meeting, clutching a manila envelope in his hands. He sat down quietly while the rest of the meeting resumed. But when the meeting was called to adjourn, Wheeler muttered something inaudibly, and proceeded to pull a red handkerchief from his overalls from which he extracted a handgun. He demanded certain people stay while letting the others in the room go, Kuphal among them.

Despite having more than one account for the details of this information, Lerhke made the decision to keep the detailing of the online updates to a minimum.

"There's always a question of how much information do we give,' said Lerhke. "Given how tense this situation was growing, we decided to say what needed to be said, and nothing more than that for the time being."

The situation was far from over at this point in time. The hostage situation needed to be taken care of. When Sheriff Michael Wetzel arrived on the scene and saw Wheeler aggressively pointing his gun at the hostages through the windowed window of the board room, plans to storm the room were put into action.

According to an article of reflection on the police's action from this incident in the Morrison County Record, Wetzel made the decision to enter the room, and the lieutenant and another officer on the scene would follow him in single file. The officers wore soft body armor, which they wear on a regular basis.

In the timeline of events, this is where Lerhke felt verification of the facts was needed the most.

"I heard so many different takes on what happened from everyone around me, I'm not sure I even knew what was really happening," said Lerhke.

Once Wetzel entered the room, Wheeler ducked behind the board room desk, and quickly came back up with only his head and gun visible -- the gun pointed directly at Wetzel and his two men.

According to an article Kuphal wrote the day after the incident, there was an exchange of words between Wheeler and Wetzel. Wetzel asked Wheeler to put his gun down, but he refused. Wheeler than continued to tell Wetzel to go away or he was going to shoot someone.

An unnamed source also in Kuphal's article made the statement that Wheeler "became increasingly agitated as more law enforcement officers became visible."

After another officer asked Wheeler to put his weapon down for a second time and again he refused, the police converged on the board room. As police entered the room, they yelled for the hostages to "get down and get out" said Kuphals' source.

The entire elapsed time of the incident was 15 - 20 seconds. In that time, two shots grazed Wheeler's head and another five hit his back.

The Morrison County Record would not run any of these details until they had verified everything they had with more than one source, whether it was the smallest of details or highly crucial. It did not go to print without verification.

After all the facts were gathered, it all became clear. Twenty shots were fired in all. Several of the shots that hit Wheeler's back actually hit him in the side. It was determined Wetzel took the first shot in self defense and Wheeler was taken to St. Gabriel's Hospital in Little Falls, where he later died. However, this information was printed in an article reflecting on Wetzel's' actions three months after the incident happened.

Lerhke faced a lot of criticism from the public for not running a full length in depth story of what happened concerning the shooting right away.

"I felt it was necessary to check everything out before posting it online, in print, or wherever it was going to run," said Lerhke. "The citizens are the first ones we report for, the paper second, but we have to have the concrete evidence in order to walk that fine line, otherwise we're putting the newspaper in jeopardy."

Criticism also came when Kuphal's article was run. According to Lerhke, the complaints had to deal with how trustworthy the story could be if one of their own reporters was the source. How could they know if they Record wasn't shaping their views to hide something?

According to Perkins, reporters do not write to please the reader. They're writing to inform the reader.

"Wheeler had been clashing with the county commissioner's board for some time. The public has the right to know that as much as anything else," Perkins said. "Now, I had talked to Wheeler before his involvement in this situation and he was always very kind to me, but I can't let that sway me from the facts."

When it comes to a time of crisis, it's often the media the public turns to in finding the information they're seeking. September 11, 2001 is a prime example of how important the media became to the public. Upon hearing the news of two planes crashing into the Twin Towers, the next place everyone found themselves was in front of a TV set or surfing the Internet. The media had a responsibility that day to the public, and that was keeping the people informed of every happening of the day's events.

Truthfulness is a key to journalism, but what is truthfulness without verification. "The journalist's process of verification becomes a hallmark to adherence to a truthful account to the news and is covered under the heading of truthfulness" says Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in "The Elements of Journalism".

It's not just truthful reporting that points a reporter on their way.

"It's also your morals," said Morrison County Record reporter Tina Snell. "You need to be able to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day."