What do you do when another newspaper in your market has named the woman who accused NBA superstar Kobe Bryant of rape?

That was the question of the day at the Boulder Daily Camera, a Scripps-owned paper just up the road from Denver's Rocky Mountain News, which this week published the name of the accuser in a story about her adding her real name to her lawsuit against Bryant. The woman asked the media to respect her anonymity, but her decision to file the case with her name attached put the decision in the hands of news executives.

Camera Editor Sue Deans said the paper will publish her name for the first time in its Saturday edition. Until now it has shielded her identity, even though her name has been published at various venues on the Internet. Deans says her staff is not covering the story locally, but will run a Scripps News Service story written by a Rocky Mountain News writer -- which names the woman.

Deans said that, even though the Daily Camera and the Rocky Mountain News both are Scripps-owned papers, the Camera's editors faced this decision without guidance or an edict from corporate. Deans, who has been at the paper a little over a year, sent an e-mail to the staff Friday inviting anyone in the newsroom to send her feedback, and/or to participate in the afternoon news meeting where the decision to name would be discussed.

Deans says the newsroom consensus was that the accuser, by adding her name to the re-filed lawsuit, had given the Camera and other media permission to publish her name. She said there wasn't a lot of argument.

There also was precedent at the paper. Before Deans' arrival, the paper had a policy that sexual-assault accusers who filed civil lawsuits could be identified. That policy applied in the high-profile case of a former University of Colorado student who filed suit against the school for her alleged rape by CU football players. The woman in that case was routinely identified by the Camera.

That case is interesting because the accuser had gone public -- going so far as to testify publicly before a legislative committee -- but then later asked the media not to identify her in continuing stories about the CU sex scandal. Deans says "the horse was out of the barn" at that point, so the Camera was unwilling to meet her request.

Deans emphasizes that future rape cases will be weighed individually; there will be no knee-jerk decision based on newspaper policies. In general, the Camera will identify rape accusers only if they give permission, but take it on a case-by-case basis when an accuser has filed a civil suit.