On America’s worst day, The Inquirer responded as never before to an immense and evolving story that would forever change the nation.
To get the story, one reporter walked four miles along the Hudson River, bought her way onto a speedboat to Manhattan, and relied on the kindness of strangers to get to Ground Zero.
In the newsroom, another reporter worked the phones, alternately writing a front-page story on the grisly scene in Manhattan and calling home for news of a brother who lives four blocks from the World Trade Center.
Inquirer Editor Robert Rosenthal set the tone for the coverage Tuesday, telling editors he wanted a front page that was written “for history.”
Although I don’t write very often about how we got the story – after all, it is our job to get the story – I thought the dimensions of this coverage warranted a look behind the curtain, to show you how The Inquirer produced Wednesday’s 28-page section devoted entirely to the attack on America.
Reporter Jennifer Lin wore black leather mules, a backless shoe that looks like a clog, to work Tuesday morning. Before the day was over, she would feel the blisters on her feet and rue the decision.
On the way to work, Lin heard on KYW radio that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers.
Only minutes later, at 9:03, she and city editor Ginny Smith watched on television as the second tower was struck. Smith dispatched Lin to Manhattan, and she boarded a 9:26 Amtrak train, getting as far as Newark before it was halted.
Out on the platform, she interviewed people heading south, fleeing New York City, and phoned her notes to a reporter in the newsroom. Then she started trekking toward Jersey City.
A woman in a car offered a ride and drove her a short way, until police diverted all traffic. Lin walked a mile, then hailed a cab. From Jersey City, she walked to Hoboken, south to Newport, and then doubled back the four miles to Weehawken.
All the while, she was trying to figure a way to get across the Hudson. Ferries were bringing people from the city, but no one was allowed on the return trip.
At Weehawken, she and five others paid a private boat owner $40 apiece for a ride to 79th Street on Manhattan’s West Side. A cabbie took her to Midtown, and she hiked the rest of the way.
En route, she interviewed those streaming away from the scene and stopped at pay phones to file her notes. That night she tried five hotels before she found a room. It would be another day before she located an Athlete’s Foot store in Times Square that was open.
“I bought a pair of sneakers,” she said.
Editor Rosenthal arrived about 8:40 a.m. Tuesday at what was supposed to be a retreat for company executives near Conshohocken. A phone call from the publisher’s secretary, Eileen Coleman, interrupted the meeting with news of the first plane crash.
As Rosenthal drove down the jammed Schuylkill Expressway to the main newsroom in Center City, he flicked from one station to another, jotting one-word story ideas on the back of a business card. By the time he reached the Broad Street office, he knew the first eight stories he would assign.
The newsroom already was a hive of activity. Anne Gordon, Features chief, had called staffers at home, and four photographers and nine reporters, in addition to Lin, were now on their way to New York. Meanwhile, the Pentagon had been attacked.
By 10, editors from each of the paper’s 12 major desks had gathered to decide what piece of the story each would tackle. Rosenthal began by setting the scope of the paper’s effort.
“This is Pearl Harbor for Americans,” he said. “It is one of the truly momentous events of our lives. We’ll do everything we can conceivably think of.”
Much of the discussion concerned story possibilities and staff expertise. The brainstorming helped bring to the surface the main questions and themes the paper would pursue.
The talk halted briefly as editors watching a television reacted to breaking news. As each tower collapsed, the story grew exponentially.
Outside the conference room, 20 people worked to put together the paper’s first Extra edition since O.J. Simpson’s acquittal in 1995, and only the fifth in 50 years. (The others: the MOVE fire and the deaths of JFK and Marilyn Monroe.)
They had 45 minutes to select and edit three wire stories and a local reaction piece, choose and crop photos, create a map of the site, write headlines and captions, and lay out pages. The first four pages of that morning’s paper were replated for the Extra, which hit the streets about 12:30 p.m. and sold 30,000 copies. Over the next few days, 28,000 more copies would be sold.
Features reporter Alfred Lubrano was asked to take feeds from other reporters and write a story about the destruction in Lower Manhattan. He was a natural choice, having covered the 1993 trade center bombing for New York Newsday.
What editors didn’t know was that he had spent his wedding night at a World Trade Center hotel, or that his brother, Christopher, lives only blocks away.
Lubrano worked the story hard, calling sources in New York as well as taking notes and dictated feeds from 26 people. In between, he made phone calls until he learned that his brother was unharmed.
“I couldn’t find him for awhile,” he said. “It was hard to separate what I needed for myself with what I needed for the paper.” But he was grateful that he had something engrossing to do while his brother’s fate was uncertain. “The job helped me focus,” he said.
Two other Inquirer staffers learned that close relatives – a brother and a cousin – had not survived. Managing editor Phillip Dixon talked quietly with each of them and urged them to go home.
Forty stories were in the works when 32 editors convened again at 12:30 p.m. in the conference room.
They talked about which stories were bearing fruit, which had fallen by the wayside, and what had happened since the morning meeting – among other things, the crash of another hijacked plane in western Pennsylvania.
Keeping all this straight and steering a big, running story is complicated, and at times the meeting grew chaotic as conversations bumped into each other.
“Can we be a little more methodical?” Dixon asked at one point. “Can we go desk by desk?” suggested Hank Klibanoff, deputy managing editor, as he, too, tried to restore order.
Two more meetings would be held that afternoon; at each, the focus of the coverage would become sharper. Editors were reminded to edit tightly, meet deadlines, and make sure stories led with hard news. Photos and graphics would run large.
“The main stories should be written as if we are writing for history,” Rosenthal said.
It was up to Charles Knittle, senior news editor for enterprise, to see whether everything would fit. He gathered up the lists of stories and said, “I need an hour.”
By 7 p.m., Steve Kelly, who was laying out the front page, had settled on a final design – three stories and two photos – that would last the night.
Photo editors sifted through the hundreds of images produced by Inquirer and wire service photographers – 631 from the Associated Press alone. It was decided that one of those photos, of a man hurtling headfirst to certain death, would run inside the section and not be emphasized. Some readers would object that it was used at all.
The paper’s main edition was ready at 12:02 a.m., eight minutes ahead of deadline. When the presses rolled, 110,000 extra copies were printed, and when those sold out, 30,000 more.
The next day, news editor Kelly said he thought the night had gone smoothly. What had he been thinking as he prepared the front page?
“This is the biggest story of my lifetime,” he said.
