Covering the aftermath of Sept. 11 in New York City as a working journalist was a bit like watching a gripping action and adventure movie only to realize that you, yourself, happened to be in many of the scenes. It was a bizarre, sad and disorienting experience. It changed my life, and it changed the way I look at journalism - at this job that reporters and photographers and editors do, every day, to help people understand the world around them.
Picture the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Where were you? Chances are, you were glued to a TV set, watching the two jets arc ruthlessly toward the World Trade Center towers. Not me - I was in bed asleep. It sounds odd, but consider: last Sept. 11 was a Tuesday, Primary Day. At the time, my beat was covering politics. And every political reporter knows that sleeping in is one of the basic rules for good election coverage. Because when you're up until 2 a.m. filing your stories on deadline, after the final poll returns come in, you want to be awake and alert.
So, unlike much of the rest of America, I caught the news of the 9/11 attacks severely after the fact and in an embarrassingly low-tech way: over a scratchy hand-held radio. That happened at about 11 a.m., after I walked into the polling place on my block and found a cluster of elderly poll workers gathered around a single tiny radio. Nobody else was there. Talk about surreal. It was like Orson Wells' broadcast of "The War of the Worlds," only in that case the panicky listeners had to be convinced that the attack from outer space was fake. For me it was the opposite - I had to be convinced that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were real. It seemed like part of an evil dream had drifted into the sunshine of a warm September day.
After that moment of realization, everything became a blur of hyperactivity. I went straight to work, because that's what reporters do when news happens. I helped put together, for the front page of the Sept. 12 papers, a package of stories about how Western New Yorkers were reacting to the attacks. Most people were stunned, scared and angry. A few people - the older ones, men and women my grandparents' age - said that the day reminded them of Dec. 7, 1941, and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The reaction stories were painful to write, but they were honest and real. I also think they were important. A newspaper, in a time of crisis, becomes a way for suffering people to talk to each other and feel a certain kinship. That's a serious responsibility.
Around 9:30 p.m., as I was working at my desk in the busy newsroom, the city editor walked up. "If we can get you to New York City, can you go?" he asked.
Yes, I said. Of course I can go. My job is to go. But the city is blocked off, the roads and bridges are closed, the U.S. Army is guarding Manhattan, they're not letting anyone in or out. How will we get in?
"I've got you a ride in the back of an ambulance," he said.
That's how, at midnight on Sept. 11, I came to be standing in a parking lot in downtown Buffalo, shivering and waiting for a fleet of ambulances to leave for New York City. We spent a week there, at Ground Zero. (Rather than keeping us out, the Army - recognizing the volunteer ambulances - helped us get in. It's amazing what a military convoy can do when it comes to front-and-center access.) I had one set of clothes, six notebooks, no laptop and a cell phone that didn't work from Manhattan - nobody's did. Under those conditions, I think I did some good work. Not my best ever, but good, solid, important work. I fulfilled my role, which was to bring solid reporting of hard facts, gritty details and compelling scenes to readers back in Buffalo.
The American media has a tendency to dress up stories, to make them just a tiny bit glitzier than perhaps they really are (think Chandra Levy, the "other" big story of the summer of 2001, prior to Sept. 11). That's a trap reporters and editors should struggle to resist. Covering the 9/11 attacks at Ground Zero, I knew for certain that I was in the middle of the biggest news story of my generation. I was face-to-face with something that was bigger than any exaggeration; it was bigger, even, than our movie- and media-saturated imaginations could conceive. A story like Sept. 11 happens once in a lifetime for most reporters and editors. It was up to us to strive to be, for once, as big as the news we were covering.
One year later, I'm still not sure what the legacy of that horrible day will be for me as a journalist and as a human being. Harder still, to foresee the legacy for a badly wounded nation.
Charity Vogel is faculty adviser to The Spectrum and a staff reporter at the Buffalo News.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
