Constants, change in 16 years of Brown's case

So much changes in 16 years. So much stays the same.

January 9, 1993, was a cold and snowy winter Saturday. Inside the Lattof YMCA in Des Plaines where I was taking my 31/2-year-old son for swimming lessons, the windows were wet and streaked with steam. I learned of the killings of seven people in a phone call to the front desk. My wife, at home with our 1-year-old, had to ask them to track me down. She'd gotten a call from then-Managing Editor John Lampinen. I returned it from a pay phone in the hall.

"Oh my gosh," was all I could say when he told me about the bodies found in a Brown's Chicken & Pasta refrigerator. "How could someone do such a thing?"

That question was at the heart of the work of an entire newsroom. It would be all hands on deck for the rest of that day and much of the following week, as reporters, artists and photographers attempted, first, merely to understand what had occurred and then to chronicle in words and pictures the police, community and personal fallout.

For content editors and reporters, it was a maelstrom of on-the-fly planning, identifying who to talk to, deploying photographers and reporters, attempting to build a story from details that were murky and constantly changing.

It fell to the copy desk to direct the traffic of stories, charts and pictures produced by others, as well as write headlines, design pages and edit and proofread stories that changed sometimes even as they were about to be put on the page. It was a blur of activity involving tools that now are quaint historical curiosities - pica poles, photo wheels, PMTs, border tape, galley proofs, mat knives, a dot-matrix printer - and constant trips back and forth running up and down the steps between the newsroom and the composing room to manage the construction and filming of individual pages.

By the time the second of two suspects would be identified and arrested and wend his way through the courts system, it would be a different world. I would have traveled the full arc of middle age and watched its definition change multiple times. My 3-year-old swimmer and his younger brother would have the high school career denied 16-year-old Brown's victim Michael Castro. They would never know the relationship between the horror in Palatine and their parents' constant demands for text messages on their whereabouts and plans.

When the time came for news coverage of James Degorski's verdict, reporters, photographers and copy editors would have an entirely new tool set, including cell phones, laptops, pagemaking software and digital cameras. Lampinen would become Daily Herald editor. Then-reporter Madeleine Doubek would move through various roles on the way to becoming managing editor. Other reporters and editors on the original case would find themselves in management roles, directing stories they once initiated.

Webmasters, a function inconceivable in 1993, would be brought into the equation and become part of a monthslong planning effort aimed at getting a wealth of information posted into multiple platforms - another new concept - in a fraction of time. When malfunctioning BlackBerrys foiled a plan to text message the verdict from the courthouse, a reporter would shift to her iPhone. Readers following the case on a Daily Herald Twitter account would know the outcome literally within seconds, online readers just minutes later. It would all be complemented by a Web photo gallery, video and links to a decade and a half's worth of stories.

And still, when I looked at the stories in print on Wednesday morning, two familiar sentences would come to mind.

"Oh my gosh. How could someone do such a thing?"