On Tuesday, 90 minutes of war changed the world.
To capture the story as quickly as possible, the Free Press published a 16-page extra edition that chronicled those first horrible moments. The edition was on the streets by 3 p.m., so people traveling home could begin to see and comprehend what had befallen the United States.
Tuesday started as an ordinary morning in the newsroom.
At 8:45 a.m., it was ordinary no more.
At 9 a.m., Managing Editor Carole Leigh Hutton was watching the first World Trade Center tower burn, after she saw people gather around newsroom televisions.
At first, she didn’t believe a plane had crashed into it. But while she was watching, the other plane hit. “I knew it was a terrorist attack,” Huttonsaid.
Peter Gavrilovich, deputy nation/world editor, was walking into the newsroom and saw Hutton staring. “It had just happened,” Gavrilovich said. “Only one tower was on fire, and she said a plane had crashed into it.”
At 9:03 a.m., the second plane hit the other tower.
He, too, thought terrorist attack, and wondered about the significance of Sept. 11. His next thought was making sure the nation/world desk was staffed with enough people.
The story was developing so quickly. The Pentagon had been hit. All U.S. air traffic was halted. There were other reports that needed confirmation.
At 10 a.m., the first tower collapsed.
“Then the story goes from significant to catastrophic to an overwhelming number of casualties,” Gavrilovich said. “The degree of the story intensified about every five minutes.”
Hutton’s main task now was to get people in place and working. Calls were made, but the task was surprisingly easy. For instance, Joe Grimm, the Free Press’ recruitment and development editor who is a former news editor, volunteered to rewrite and edit stories. Page designers and copy editors, whose shifts were not supposed to begin until late afternoon, began showing up.
At 10:29 a.m., the second tower collapsed. The newsroom, circulation and production department intensified discussions on how to produce an extra.
Executive Editor Robert G. McGruder said he didn’t know exactly where the idea of the extra edition came from, but “once it was in the air, everyone said ‘Let’s go.’ ”
He said he knew the newsroom would respond because “this was a challenge to our values — accuracy, balance, speed, completeness, strong presentation, meeting the needs of readers, being useful — and we wanted to give readers the most and best as quickly as possible.”
At 10:15 a.m., Deputy Managing Editor Dave Robinson confirmed that the extra edition was a go. It would be 16 pages, with seven pages of color. The deadline was 1 p.m.
“There were so many pieces to organize, but it became much easier because people just showed up on their own,” said Robinson. “It was really amazing. Everybody jumped right in.”
At 11 a.m., News Editor Nancy Laughlin arrived at work. “Sometimes people don’t realize events like these deeply affect journalists. There is so much work to do, you put your business face on and do it. But you go home and your heart just breaks for other people.”
“This is an incredible tragedy, and you can’t be complacent. If we ever get complacent again, just look at this picture,” she said, referring to the burning World Trade Center.
Once the decision was made to publish the extra, Hutton’s focus was on forming a plan, specifying stories and assigning reporters and editors. “We tried to produce stories we could build on for tomorrow’s paper,” said Hutton, since the newsroom had to publish the extra edition and Wednesday’s expanded newspaper.
She also was thinking about getting locally written stories on the newspaper’s Web site, www.freep.com, as soon as possible, well before the extra edition was complete.
Meanwhile, the editorial page staff began calling previous letter writers so their reaction could be reflected in the edition. “The conversation needed to be launched,” said Associate Editorial Page Editor Becca Rothschild.
Editorial cartoonist Mike Thompson’s task was more daunting.
“I said, ‘Mike, we’re doing an extra; you’ve got an hour, do you want to draw?’ And he said ‘OK.’ The truth is he was already hunched over his desk,” Rothschild said.
The extra would be written, designed and sent to the pressroom in less than three hours. It contained the first timeline of the events, photos of the chaos, information on the airliners, columns on the economicimpact and how to cope, maps and diagrams of the Trade Center complex and lower Manhattan, responses from readers and a full-page picture of the collapsing south tower.
In about 90 minutes, 40,000 copies were printed. By 3 p.m., they were available in convenience stores, and sold by hawkers on the street.
By 6 p.m., the newspapers were sold out.
“We couldn’t keep papers on the shelves anywhere,” said Jeff Gibson, single-copy director for Detroit Newspapers.
This effort was all driven by a desire to help people make some sense of the day’s tragic events. Journalists, press operators, truck drivers and many others stepped forward to serve readers — then immediately started focusing on the next task at hand, an expanded Wednesday morning edition.
“We have an obligation to separate fact from fiction, rumor from reality, things we talk about all the time,” said McGruder. “We practice and talk about it all the time, but on a big story, we just do it.”
