Shortly after 9 a.m. last Tuesday, Times-Dispatch business reporter Greg Edwards and photographer Bruce Parker were driving north on Interstate 95.
Their destination was Washington, Va., in Rappahannock County and their assignment was to produce an article and pictures on organic farming there.
Already they had heard on the car radio of the disaster in New York City at the World Trade Center towers hit by two airliners. They wondered whether they should skip the farm and head for Washington.
“I was looking forward to a nice day in the country,” said Edwards.
Then over National Public Radio they heard that a jetliner had crashed into the Pentagon. “We gotta go,” said Parker, who was at the wheel and passed the planned U. S. Route 17 exit toward “Little Washington.”
They heard on the car radio that Interstate 395, which passes the Pentagon, was closed, so they took an exit at Woodbridge to U.S. Route 1. They got as far as Glebe Road before being stopped at a roadblock.
Edwards took over driving and Parker, his shoulders loaded with cameras and lenses, left the car and alternately ran and walked the three miles to the Pentagon.
Given that, at most disaster sites, the press often is kept at a distant location with little line of sight, Parker said he was surprised that police gave him access to an area with an extremely good view of the burning Pentagon. His dramatic color photo of the scene appeared on Page A3 Wednesday. He added a photo of the U.S. Route 1 traffic jam.
He credited the T-D’s associate director of photography, Jim Caiella, for that access. Through Caiella’s efforts earlier in the year, reporters and photographers obtained state police press passes with color photo identification and signed by police Superintendent Gerald Massengill.
Parker said he saw professional photographers who had no passes turned away by police.
Meantime, Edwards had parked the company car at a Porsche-Audi automobile dealership at Glebe Road and also hiked to the Pentagon where he interviewed witnesses for his article, published with Parker’s photo.
The Pentagon was a familiar landmark for Edwards in his previous trips to the Washington area. “To see the Pentagon on fire like that, it gave you a weird feeling,” he said.
Edwards, whose accent betrays his roots in Wise County coal country, sensed a familiar odor at the Pentagon crash site.
“It smelled like a coal fire,” he said.
* * *
In an open area of the T-D newsroom, four 5-foot-long work tables are pushed together to form a rectangle. At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, 12 editors sat around the perimeter for the regular morning meeting to begin planning for the next day’s newspaper.
In other sections of the vast newsroom, clusters of early arriving reporters and editors stood and stared at repeating sights of destruction displayed by each of 11 televisions suspended from the ceiling.
Howard Owen, a deputy managing editor, presided over the meeting as editors told where they had sent reporters – Richmond International Airport, the state Capitol, the Federal Building, the Virginia Blood Services center, the Pentagon. Melissa Ruggieri, a Flair section reporter in New York to cover Monday night’s Michael Jackson concert, would be on the street in Manhattan and would file a story.
Managing Editor Louise Seals appeared and interrupted the reports. The Times-Dispatch would publish an extra by midafternoon, she said. Deadline would be 2 p.m. Editors should attend an 11 a.m. planning session in a conference room.
For the first time since the afternoon News Leader was closed in 1992, The Times-Dispatch would be publishing today’s news rather than yesterday’s.
The 11 a.m. meeting would turn out to be the second of four planning meetings Tuesday. The organization, planning, receptiveness to ideas and the smooth response to assignments impressed this observer.
What about a press crew for the extra? A six-man crew already was at the Hanover County production plant running off the weekly Your sections for Wednesday distribution. They would be held there to print the extra.
How would extras be delivered to single-copy racks and stores? Carriers who distributed the morning paper mostly were at other jobs and not available. Advertising salesmen and managers in circulation and production were organized into delivery teams.
Were enough copy editors present? How about presentation editors (those who compose the pages on computer terminals)? Who will be in charge of feeding stories to the online newspaper, timesdispatch.com? Two picture editors will be needed, “There will be lots of photos in this,” Seals said.
Should advertising be in the extra? The plan was to produce at least 50,000 copies and the cost of newsprint would be high.
The decision was to include no ads. Said Tappy August, president and general manager:
“Our first obligation is to get out as much news as possible and worry about business later.”
* * *
At 1:50 p.m., or 10 minutes before deadline, not a single page for the extra had been completed. Presentation Desk Director Brice Anderson was designing a color picture page. At another composition terminal sat Danny Finnegan, deputy managing editor. He had Page One – a bold type EXTRA above the nameplate – on his screen.
The Page One headline, in 2-inch all capitals, read ACTS OF WAR. Discarded was a headline that read ATTACK. The wording of the headline had been argued all morning. “Acts of war” was proposed early in the process by Art Director Tom Bond, but “it was pooh-poohed” and dismissed, he said.
A seed was planted, though, and Deputy Managing Editor Owen favored “Acts of War.” And it appeared on Page One.
Finnegan at the terminal was working not only under extreme deadline pressure but also under scrutiny of about 20 editors gathered around his station. His overseers included August, Seals and a limping Bill Millsaps, executive editor and senior vice president who had driven in from home where he had been confined since undergoing major surgery four weeks earlier.
More protests were voiced about the headline. Several said it should be larger, perhaps two lines a half-page deep. Others were testy about the wording and the implication of the word “war.” Was “war” appropriate? At one point, Finnegan, exasperated, rose and walked away momentarily. No one, though, offered an acceptable replacement.
The issue was still being argued when Seals sternly reminded the assembly that deadline was minutes away and the page had to go.
By 2:18 p.m., all 10 pages had been sent to production.
* * *
The editors met again at 2 p.m. and then at 4:30 to plan Wednesday’s morning paper. With Finnegan presiding, editors identified 43 staff stories available. Story lengths, slugs (names) and deadlines were assigned.
Harry Meem, wire news editor, reported he had 19 stories selected from the different wire services the T-D employs.
Wednesday’s final edition included 41 staff articles and 13 staff pictures, 23 wire stories and 18 wire photos or graphics related to the terrorist attacks. Some stories from the early planning were combined with others.
Ruggieri, her editor reported, had gathered comments from New Yorkers but her laptop had failed. She was dictating over the phone. Her reports didn’t make it into Wednesday’s paper. She returned by train and wrote a first-person account for Thursday.
* * *
On Wednesday, President Bush spoke to his Cabinet and congressional leaders at the White House. The attacks “carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror,” he said.
“They were acts of war.”
