One of the challenges of breaking news is that both readers and news organizations want to see information on the web right after it happens, which is that's exactly when everyone is trying to figure out what occured.

When the news is big, the first step is sometimes easier, because it doesn't take much deliberation.

If a plane crashes or someone is killed, for example, I know I'm usually going to put whatever information I can immediately confirm up on the web and head to the scene.

But the calculation is often more complicated.

For example:

I heard about 7:30 this morning that police and firefighters were called to a "vehicle versus pedestrian" accident near Ramona Elementary School in Oxnard, I made calls to the fire and police departments.

I was able to confirm that at two minors had been hit and taken to a hospital, but it wasn't immediately clear how seriously they were hurt.

So here are some of my considerations:

Do I put the confirmed information immediately up on the web, and leave readers wondering if the injuries are bumps and bruises or life-threatening wounds?

Do I wait for more information, and risk missing witnesses at the scene if it was serious?

Do I head to the scene, risking a lot of wasted time if the crash turns out to be nothing?

Since I hear about vehicle versus pedestrian crashes just about every day, and they are usually nothing, I decided to wait.

In doing so, I had another conundrum to deal with:

My contacts at the Oxnard Fire Department and Oxnard Police Department kindly offered to call me back and send out a press release respectively when they knew more, but as each additional minute ticked by, I knew that if the accident was serious, my chances of getting to the scene early were diminishing.

On the other hand, if I called my contacts every five minutes every time a pedestrian was hit by a car, that would be pretty inefficient. (And they wouldn't be very happy with me, since they of course have other jobs to do.)

After picking time intervals to check back with them, I learned about 8:15 that one girl had only a minor injury.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and put a short brief on the web.

About 15 minutes later, we got a press release with more information, and I updated the brief on the Internet.

Stay tuned here at The Backstory for more breathtakingly exciting episodes from the breaking news cycle.

And, more importantly, be safe out there.

It's big, it's hungry and it craves information.

It's always out there, and no matter what you feed it today, it's going to be hungry again tomorrow.

It's the news hole, the seemingly infinite public desire for information.

In journalism circles, it's known as the Beast, because every day we have to make sure we have information to feed it. If we don't, we might cease to exist.

And nowhere is the beast more ravenous than in the world of breaking news.

(Well, at least from my perspective as a breaking news reporter ... but really, I'm pretty sure it's not more ravenous anywhere else ... Anyway ...)

In times past, reporters rushed to get the story for the next day's paper, or maybe the evening edition. If you were a radio reporter you might break into a broadcast. A television reporter would hustle to make deadline before a newscast.

But that was before 24 hour T.V. Way before the Internet.

In the digital age, we don't feed the Beast once a day, we feed it constantly.

I was thinking about this on Wednesday after a long day of covering a homicide in Camarillo.

(Here's the final story: http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/aug/07/passenger-fatally-shoots-man-in-vehicle/)

I started covering the story shortly after 6 a.m. when I heard from the Sheriff's watch commander that deputies were investigating a possible homicide.

After putting a brief on the web, I hurried to the scene, called back to the officer to report the little I could find out, talked to the Sheriff's spokesman, and shot some video.

Then I went back to the office and put an updated story on the web.

A short time later, I called the medical examiner's office, added the shooting victim's name to the web story.

Then I set to work on a short video about the homicide.

Now, all this time, I wasn't working in a vacuum.

The local radio station, KVTA, was putting up updates, too (there were probably other news outlets involved too. That was the only one I was watching, though). And if they had something we didn't, people commenting on our web site let us know lickety-split.

When the radio reported first that the Sheriff's department had named a suspect, for example, I heard about it from colleagues and hurried to add that to my web story.

All this while, I'm trying to get in touch with family members of the victim. They are grieving, of course, and understandably busy, so I'm trying to conform to their schedule. I'm happy they want to talk to me at all.

Still, I have to drop what I'm doing to update the web story when we learn that the suspect in the homicide has been arrested.

(At some point during the tumult, I finish the video so we can put it on the web, and I speak to the shooting victim's brother.)

Later we find out that there's a press conference near the crime scene, and my breaking news partner, John Scheibe, rushes out to cover that.

With the information he gets and an additional interview with the Sheriff's spokesman I rewrite the story for publication.

Just as I finish, coworkers stop by to ask if I have anything new.

Readers are already clamoring for more.