CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Hundreds of pages of notes, emails and other documents shed light on the reporting and fallout of a now-discredited Rolling Stone magazine article about a rape at the University of Virginia.

Documents released Friday as part of a lawsuit against the magazine detail author Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s realization in December 2014 that the woman who claimed she had been raped was not credible. Erdely told magazine editors in a Dec. 5 email that they would have to run a retraction, saying she spoke to the woman identified only as “Jackie” after the story had run and “felt nearly certain that she was not being truthful.”

A university administrator sued the magazine and Erdely, saying she was cast as a villain in the November 2014 article. Rolling Stone officially retracted the story in April 2015.