Photographer Alan Chaniewski just wanted to get to New York. Editors planned to send him in a helicopter, then with another photographer and a writer on a cigarette boat from Old Saybrook. When boat owners were reluctant, he left his colleagues at the marina and kept driving to New York. He finally left his car under a bridge in the Bronx and began walking with his cameras – across the bridge, then 100 blocks on a near-empty highway along the East River. A gypsy cab took him the last few blocks to a midtown apartment, where he dropped off some gear, then headed by taxi toward the fallen towers.
As Chaniewski and other photographers and writers raced toward New York, editors in Hartford started putting together a four-page “Extra” to wrap around that day’s newspaper and hit the street by lunchtime. Quietly, they assembled the components: Pass me the caption. Don’t forget the “America’s Oldest Continuously Published Newspaper.” Perfect. Awesome. In less than an hour — but 15 minutes past deadline — they were nearly done.
Although Production Director Joe DeLuca was eager to get the Extra edition onto the street, he calmly told them, “Take your time and get it right.”
By mid-afternoon, Chaniewski had run into staff writers Mark Pazniokas and Denis Horgan in lower Manhattan. The writers also had driven to New York and left a car in the Bronx (not far from the photographer’s), then walked more than 139 blocks, mostly along Lexington Avenue, winding their way toward the scene.
Photographer Brad Clift talked his way past blockades into Manhattan and he, too, encountered Chaniewski on the street. (The reporter and photographer left behind in Old Saybrook finally arrived in Queens by fishing boat, got a ride to midtown, then headed to lower Manhattan in the dark.)
In Hartford, editors met on and off all day planning how to use the 23 pages that would be devoted to the acts of terror – 15 main news pages and eight in a separate, more reflective, special section. “It’s the biggest story any of us are going to work on,” Editor Brian Toolan announced early in the day. “We get one chance to do it spectacularly. That is now.” Repeatedly, he urged editors to focus on a few stories that would have impact and to create a front page that would be unlike anything The Courant had ever published. Wire photos and articles were selected and assigned to pages by theme. Editors waited to see what would arrive from New York and the other places staffers had been dispatched.
By late afternoon, Chaniewski and Clift started looking for places to develop their film. Many one-hour photo shops were closed; then one they found lost power. A small store finally processed the film, but when they returned to the midtown apartment to send their photos to Hartford, the transmission equipment failed. After struggling for hours, they went to The Courant’s nearby apartment to use the computer their colleague had carried with him on the fishing boat. By then, it was well past midnight – too late for their work to be considered for that day’s newspaper. “Of course you’re disappointed, but you’re there doing your job,” Chaniewski said later.
Earlier in the evening, a debate had begun in the newsroom about the front page and continued sporadically throughout the night. The top word editors preferred a photo of a man carrying a fire extinguisher, as if it were a lantern, as he searched for survivors in the ruins of the collapsed buildings. The top visual editors favored a photo of the struck towers with an exploding orange fireball – the iconic image they thought would endure as the universal memory of the day. The stark photo of the man walking through the rubble with his fire extinguisher prevailed.
Postscript, Day 2: Chaniewski’s photo of a woman holding a snapshot of her missing cousins was selected for Page 1, as was Pazniokas’ account of rescue efforts (with contributions from Horgan). Editor Toolan continued to urge “fierce winnowing” – to find and focus on a few compelling stories.
Readers, inundated by news from multiple sources, will render a daily verdict about The Courant’s choices. Let me know.
