At 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, the editor of The Kansas City Star, Mark Zieman, drives north toward the airport, booked for a flight to Baltimore, to attend a journalism meeting. His cell phone rings. News of the first plane crash into the World Trade Center is relayed from office to home to cell phone. He turns around and heads to work.
Within two hours, almost the entire news staff of 320 was at work. Employees scrapped vacations or ended them suddenly. Many newsroom staffers phoned in, asking whether they were needed. Editors woke up night shift workers by phone, asking them to quickly return to the office or head out on assignments across the area.
In New York City, Jackie White, on assignment to cover fashion shows, immediately shifted to general assignment duties, entering Times Square within 30 minutes of the disaster, collecting stories from passers-by.
For the first time since man walked on the moon in 1969, Star executives decided to publish an “extra” edition for street sales. Initial plans called for 50,000 copies. As the presses rolled, that number edged up five times, ending at 71,000.
Sixteen pages of news, color photos, graphics, first-person columns, an editorial and political cartoon began leaving the loading docks on the north side of The Star’s main building at 1:39 p.m. More than 40 cars and vans lined the center of McGee Street, from 17th Street to 18th Street, waiting for newspapers to distribute to 400 convenience stores across the area. Each outlet was to receive 100 copies. Street hawkers, including employees from the advertising and circulation staffs, sold papers downtown.
Reader demand exceeded supply. Carriers entering one grocery reported that shoppers left checkout lines to line up for papers. Some readers spent an hour going to 10 retail outlets in search of the extra edition, with no success.
Editorial columnist Bill Tammeus, in the midst of writing a column about national grief, received news that his nephew had died aboard one of the hijacked planes. An assistant metropolitan editor, Mike Casey, learned later that he had lost a cousin in the Pentagon destruction.
“This is an emotional time for people working here,” said Randy Waters, vice president of production. “People were devastated but also took pride in what they were doing, working together in a time of crisis to get the most current and accurate information out to readers.”
In a way, that’s a blessing of being in the news business. The work helps counter feelings of helplessness so natural in a nation rocked by sudden violence.
Even when the work stretched to 16 hours in a day — as it did for some newsroom staffers Tuesday — the job of informing readers is a powerful tonic when a nation is in mourning.
Readers sent in praise, and there was some criticisms about a shortage of the extra edition. In response, the newspaper printed an additional 11,000 copies as a benefit for the Red Cross relief effort. The copies went on sale for $5; the newspaper is paying the cost of the papers, including newsprint and mailing.
Readers offered ideas, too. By Thursday, they were requesting more details on the life of Osama bin Laden (his education, background, family and how he built his power base) and appeals for more coverage of names and locations of gas stations that had been gouging customers.
In these tense, overwhelmingly sad post-terrorist days of recovery, even some little touches were noticed by readers. A thank-you arrived on Wednesday for the Page A-2 “Thought for the Day,” chosen by the copy desk editors. Edmund Burke’s quotation read: ” The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Newspaper people, even when they start dragging from late-night hours, are among the lucky. The attempt to fully inform, to offer helpful information, to aim even for a bit of poetic writing is part of the job. The work is not the heroics of emergency personnel. But in writing about the heroes, the lost lives, the security failures and the recovery efforts, the newspaper does its job well.
As a Blue Springs reader said, “This reminds me of how utterly dependent, and rightly so, we are on the media and how great a job the networks and newspapers do. Keep up the good work.”
