Continuous news

When a gunman entered a branch bank in Virginia Beach shortly after 9 a.m. March 25 and shot an employee dead, Marc Davis and Matthew Jones of the Virginia Beach news staff were on the story within minutes. Throughout the day, as police conducted a house-by-house search for the killer, they kept our online readers informed of every development -- updating and rewriting the online report a dozen times or more.

Photographer Genevieve Ross was on the scene in time to capture compelling photos of the victim's family and friends in the bank's parking lot. She couldn't leave the scene while the story was still unfolding, so Alex Burrows of the Photo Staff dispatched Leo Kim to the scene to bring back Genevieve's images to use online.

The local TV Web sites had their helicopters in the air, but their coverage consistently lagged behind The Pilot's in both urgency and detail.

And the extraordinary effort was not lost on online viewers. Before the day was over, the story had logged more than 21,700 page views.

Thanks to the extra effort, the story belonged to The Pilot all day.