Remembering 9/11

First came the tragedy, then the frenzied planning.

The terrorists attack a decade ago had a profound effect on all of us working at my newspaper in New York – after all, it happened right in our own backyard. (I, for one, wailed like a baby as I huddled with shocked neighbors watching the Twin Towers crumble to the ground on TV.)

I knew of colleagues living downtown temporarily displaced from their homes, and one who lost a brother at the Pentagon. One of my own cousins, working blocks from ground zero, was caught in the mayhem and had to have rescue workers hose off the black soot and ash that enveloped her before she could go home.

This wasn’t six degrees of separation – it was two degrees, at most.

The author Garrison Keillor contends that nothing bad ever happens to a writer – it’s all just material. He couldn’t be more wrong – or more right, for my newspaper and other publications went on to win Pulitzer prizes for their extensive 9/11 coverage.

Though deeply shaken and saddened, all of us as journalists had much work and preparation to do after that tragic day.

At the time, I was assigned to the newspaper’s Sunday business section, responsible for personal finance stories, and far removed from the daily coverage. I had planned to run a story about financing cosmetic surgery for the following weekend, and immediately scrapped it and scrambled to find something else.

“No way!” my boss agreed. “Nobody will want to read about that for awhile!”

What came in its place was a thoughtful piece about coping, and in the weeks ahead practical consumer-oriented stories related to the terror attacks.

The writer Norman Mailer talks about “the sliver of ice" that is in every writer’s soul that allows him or her "to look at catastrophe and know that it is great material.”

He’s right about that, too. But that doesn’t mean that a journalist must entirely detach from these dreadful events. The stories that stir emotions – be it in disaster zones halfway around the world or closer to home – will only serve to motivate a reporter, editor or photographer to dig a little deeper.

And we all benefit.