“Just turn on the TV,” was all Managing Editor Bobbie Jo Buel needed to say as she began calling Star editors Tuesday at 6:15 a.m.
It was the start of a workday for many that didn’t end until almost midnight.
Nearly every Star employee had a hand in last week’s historic coverage, which included printing a 16-page Extra Tuesday afternoon. More than 20,000 Extras were sold at retail outlets for a quarter each.
Coverage began when StarNet Editor John Bolton used his home computer just before 7 a.m. to post Associated Press reports of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
Hourly local news updates, which usually begin weekdays at 10 a.m. and end at 6 p.m., continued into the night.
More than five times the usual number of users visited www.azstarnet.com for the latest news, overwhelming the server at times.
StarNet, the Star’s online site, now has six separate galleries of photos posted, in addition to hundreds of stories.
A photo of a man plunging to his death was included briefly and removed after internal discussion, Bolton said.
That image, published by both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, was rejected for the paper by Teri Hayt, the Star’s director of photography.
It was disturbing, and “It didn’t tell the story for us,” she said. “With thousands of people going to die we didn’t need to focus on one.”
More than 500 pictures were available to us in the 90 minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Forty-two pictures were used in the Extra alone, and a like number in the expanded A section for the next day.
By the end of the week, the Star’s photo department had sorted through more than 2,000 images and selected about 500 for eventual use in the paper and online.
On the word front, stories were arriving from the wire services sometimes “10 in a minute,” said news editor Bill Betterton, one of three news editors – two of them extra. More than 1,700 stories moved with the word “terror” in them.
Metro Editor Tim Konski had dispatched at least six reporters by 7:30 a.m.
By midmorning, every metro reporter was out looking for stories. “We were at the border all the way to the Pinal County line,” Konski said.
Reporter Mitch Tobin heard about the attacks from a cabbie. Tobin was on his way to Tucson International Airport at 6:30 for an 8 a.m. flight to Florida.
Realizing that he wouldn’t be starting vacation, he started asking questions and almost lost his luggage.
He left it in the lounge, walked out of the secure area to interview a passenger, then had to explain to security why he had left his luggage unattended.
Newspapers for schools
On Wednesday, the Star provided more than 10,000 newspapers to schools though its subscriber vacation donation program.
On Thursday, more than 7,000 went to area schools so that teachers could use the special “How to teach the innocent about terrorism” page that day.
Janet Wood, Newspapers in Education manager, coordinated that effort.
Free papers
Also on Wednesday, 15,000 weekend and Sunday subscribers received a free paper. Randy Cross, circulation director, said he felt “readers would benefit from this ‘bonus’ paper.” Reader Mary Bradford called to thank the Star for its goodwill and generosity.
