On the night of Sept. 11, 2001, I got in my car in a parking lot in Poughkeepsie, headed north to get home, and halfway there, almost drove straight through a red light without even knowing it.
Normally, I think I would have stopped and been shaking after that. But normalcy was not an option. Not for anybody.
And especially not for anyone who had worked in a newsroom on the biggest and scariest story in modern American history.
A need to get home kept my car moving until it reached our driveway. Only there did reality sink in. In a dozen hours in a chaotic newsroom, there hadn’t been time for that. For me, the feelings I saw on my teenager’s face finally made it real. I cried. I wanted to vomit.
We are at a safe distance, though we are close enough to have local people among the missing. The task of interviewing and writing about them, editing those stories, or collecting their photographs, has been a grim one. In the Journal newsroom, most of us wonder at the reporters and photographers much closer to the scene. How are they are coming back day after day to do their jobs?
I don’t know, but I know they will, as will those in a thousand other newsrooms.
I invited others in our newsroom to share their thoughts from those first few hours and days of madness.
City Editor Julie Doll, who supervised reporters covering the story, talked about three of the newsroom’s biggest challenges — calling the families affected, taking hundreds of requests for coverage from those helping and sifting through bad information for the real stories and facts.
Calling families is a delicate process. ”We don’t want to invade a family’s privacy or intrude where we aren’t wanted. But we do want to let our community know the people who were lost in this tragedy, and the ongoing, real human toll suffered by family and friends.”
Of the overwhelming number of coverage requests, she explained: ”We tried to cover a variety of assignments that reflected the activities, feelings and views of residents in the region.”
Barbara Gallo-Farrell, assistant Life editor, had to keep working on the section’s weekly food page that would be printed in the next day’s newspaper. ”Who could think of recipes at a time like that?” she said.
What others say
Here’s what others in the newsroom had to say about their experiences:
”More than anything, the difficulty was having to work through it — seeing it, hearing it, writing about it — without having the time to deal with it myself. I stepped outside at times to cry or catch my breath, but as a reporter I had to put on a game face. And virtually all those around had their game faces on too. Somehow that seemed more difficult than I imagine it would have been if we were in places where we could have commiserated and consoled each other more.” — Dan Shapley, news reporter
”In the past days, I’ve spoken to experts on terrorism and forensic science and civil liberties. I’ve spoken to families who have lost loved ones. I’ve heard things frightening and sad but also heroic and reassuring. We are the purveyors of a terrible story. But we play an essential role. Although it’s difficult, I’m proud to be part of it.” — Mary Beth Pfeiffer, projects editor
”Throughout the day of Sept. 11, the newsroom was chaos. Phones were ringing, information was being gathered and writers and editors were frantically working to prepare the Wednesday edition. Unlike virtually every other workplace in the country, there was no time to sit in front of the television and just absorb the horrible images as they occurred. And that killed me. I became a journalist partly because of a fascination with news events and history. Yet as one of history’s greatest tragedies unfolded on national television last week, I was too busy to take it all in, to commiserate with friends and co-workers and try to make sense of it all.” — Tom Tripicco, regional editor
”We are so busy talking to sources, confirming letters (to the editor), editing stories and taking care of the many other details, that we are not like most people — glued to the TV, surfing the channels for the latest information. Being in a newsroom makes you feel connected to what’s going on, but it made me feel horribly disconnected in regard to how others were seeing the situation unfold, especially on that first day.” — John Penney, editorial page editor
”When tears came, I tried to pull back and let my sources articulate the scope of a tragedy I couldn’t understand.” — Bill Valente, news reporter
”It was odd being out in the field, hearing updates from random people. As far as I knew, it was only the World Trade Center, but at the train station, someone told me the Pentagon was hit, too.” — Nik Bonopartis, news reporter
”I was in Pittsburgh at a business meeting when the terrorist attacks occurred, so I frantically nabbed a scarce rental car and then drove eight hours, listening to the story unfold on radio and pausing to talk with editors by cell phone. It was surreal knowing this horrible event had occurred and not being able to see it. The full emotion of the event wouldn’t hit me until I saw the televised images late that night. When I arrived back in Poughkeepsie by early evening, I came into a newsroom full of people focused on getting the latest news of this immense tragedy out to our readers. I was extremely proud of this staff. And I am also proud of this community that, as it often has, rallied selflessly to help others. — Meg Downey, executive editor
”One of the biggest challenges for me was keeping composure in the office in general, as well as with callers who had stories about missing loved ones. It was hard not to cry.” — Alicia Amodeo, news assistant
”The hardest part for me, was dealing with the people who were expressing all of the emotions I was trying to suppress … Every day, someone I’ve interviewed has cried. Right now, it’s a great time to be a journalist, but it’s also a horrible time to be one.” — Michelle Carter, business reporter
