Whatever his motives, William Barr’s vague, highly succinct summary of Robert Mueller’s report could have been designed to torture most journalists. While the Glenn Greenwald-Michael Tracey-Matt Taibbi wing took a possibly premature victory lap, interpreting Barr’s cryptic paragraphs as conclusive proof that the whole thing had been a W.M.D.-like fiasco manipulated by the Deep State, the much larger group of left-leaning Mueller obsessives, headlined by Rachel Maddow and MSNBC, absorbed a gut punch while nursing hopes for another day of deliverance. Meanwhile, reporters for outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and others, who have arguably been tracking Mueller’s investigative wanderings more closely than anyone else, were left with the same questions—the ones they know Mueller should have the answers to.

Now, with Thursday’s scheduled release of a redacted version of the full 400-ish-page report, the Mueller beat is on the verge of a second moment of truth—a possibly highly partial truth, depending on which portions have been designated as too hot for public consumption. “We’ve gone through this so many times before,” said a prominent journalist, one of several reporters from the Mueller press corps who spoke with me for this piece. “We’ve lived through so many big developments in the story that it’s hard to be fazed by any of it.” Said another, “It could end up being pretty revelatory, or it could end up being a recap of stuff that’s mostly been reported.” A third concurred, “We’re all curious to see how much of our reporting drove Mueller, as opposed to vice versa. It’s sort of a scorecard to see how much of the reporting was right, and how much of it was wrong.”

Nevertheless, the things Mueller’s media chroniclers will be looking for and paying close attention to on Thursday should be a good gauge of what sorts of bombshells civilians can expect. “I think we’ve gotta see how much is redacted, because we could end up being very unsatisfied,” a fourth source told me. “High on my list are 1) to what extent did Barr’s letter accurately and completely represent the report? 2) How did Mueller come to the conclusion that he couldn’t come to a conclusion on obstruction? I think No. 3 is probably: to what extent does this expose White House aides, lawyers, people in Trump’s orbit as essentially having turned on him? And are there any that are still around? What about Hope Hicks?”

Jeffrey Toobin, the New Yorker staff writer and CNN legal analyst who’s writing a book about the special-counsel investigation, said the extent of the redactions in and of itself would be newsworthy, especially on cable news, as reporters and pundits react to the report in real time. “But the most important thing,” he continued, “is gonna be the substance, not the redactions. What part of the story are we hearing for the first time? And, obviously, how Mueller has handled the issue of obstruction in his own words, as opposed to through the prism of Barr, is gonna be very interesting.”

Some of the major news stories of the past two years that journalists hope the report will corroborate or clarify include Trump reportedly seeking to fire Mueller, Trump reportedly asking Jeff Sessions to un-recuse himself from Mueller’s probe, and, of course, the infamous Trump Tower meeting starring Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and a Kremlin agent offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. And what about the secret Seychelles meeting Mueller had reportedly been gathering evidence on? What about the veteran Republican activist and fervent Clinton e-mail-hunter, with ties to Michael Flynn, who killed himself about 10 days after he was interviewed by a Wall Street Journal reporter? Collusion or no, these are still curious fact patterns, about which Mueller presumably knows the underlying truth—if only Barr allows it to be revealed.