I was in the 7th floor offices of Editor & Publisher when the first plane struck the north tower at about 8:46 a.m., listening to the radio and working at my desk on a project that would never be completed that day as we jumped into coverage of how the story was being handled by local and national newspapers.
I remember some fellow employees who never made it into the office, others concerned about loved ones and still more who had friends and neighbors lost.
The E&P offices at 770 Broadway were at 9th street, about a mile north of the WTC and we were tuned into television viewing when the second plane struck just after 9 a.m.
Of course, we knew then that it was an attack. Hitting the phones, we found out soon that subways were shutdown, trains stopped and Manhattan essentially was closed off to outsiders. But we found out quickly that the local newspapers and those around the country, were on it with extra editions and some of the first-ever online breaking news reporting.
I recall by the end of the day that a deal had been worked out for newspaper delivery trucks to be escorted into Manhattan by state police to deliver the next day's
paper. You may recall that was when cable news outlets began running the crawls at the bottom of the screen, a practice that is the norm today.
Below is the New York Times Page One of the next day's paper, an edition that would win a Pulitzer Prize months later.
E&P's report, an all-black cover, was published just days later.
I finally got out of Manhattan back to my New Jersey home at around 8 p.m. that night.
Walking from the train to my house, where my wife had gotten home just a few hours earlier to take over care of our baby daughter from our wonderful nanny, I turned on my Walkman radio and heard this song below. I can never listen to it the same way again
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