Newseum's 9/11 Book Recounts Journalists' Role

By: Lauren Wiener There's been no shortage of media coverage about Sept. 11, but with its new book, Running Toward Danger, the Newseum presents the most intimate look yet at the experiences (and private thoughts) of the many journalists who covered the day's events, often risking their lives.

Revealing the internal struggles, fears, and decisions of everyone from free-lance photographers to high-level editors, the 251-page book, published by Rowman & Littlefield, is a compilation of oral histories and photographs in an hour-by-hour chronology.

The candid recollections reveal a gamut of emotions, as each story helps recreate a part of national history. Though the scope of the anecdotes range from journalists fighting for their lives at the heart of the World Trade Center attacks to those making split-second, high-impact editorial decisions in the newsroom, each one sheds new light on how journalists operated that day.

Some recurring themes:

Obligation: "I kissed my wife and boy and said, 'I'm going to try and get as close as I can.' She didn't beg me not to go," said New York Post columnist Rob Dreher. "She knows that there are three kinds of people who run towards danger, not away: cops, firemen, and reporters."

Sense of Failure: "I thought I should be talking to the people who were escaping and getting their names, but I couldn't do it," admitted Robert J. Hughes, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. "I felt like such a failure. I couldn't put my wits together."

Determination and Perseverance: "My own leg was bloody and they tried to take me to the hospital but I said, 'No, I can work,'" recalled Bolivar Arellano, a photographer for the New York Post.

Ethics and Decision-making: "I'd seen several images of people jumping or falling. Those really got to me. Then there was the image of one man that showed the magnitude of the situation and the loneliness. One of our editors said, 'Are we sure we want to run this?' Perhaps it's too close," recalled Howell Raines, executive editor of The New York Times. "I thought the picture told a story our readers needed to see. To suppress that picture would be wrong."

Humanity and Coping: "I came home and drank so much wine it was like drinking water," said Susan Watts, a photographer for the New York Daily News. "It didn't even take the edge off. I couldn't go to sleep. I'd go to sleep and wake up and see bodies jumping out of windows."

The tales reflect the way journalists handled the terror of 9/11 as both human beings and as professionals. Running Toward Danger tells the stories behind the stories -- and what it took to cover the news so bravely and resolutely. "Under all the circumstances, I thought it was an extraordinary paper," noted Wall Street Journal Assistant Managing Editor Jim Pensiero, of the paper they produced that day. "Just because we were rocked on our heels didn't stop us from being Journal people. I think it's a good news organization when you stress it to see what it's made out of."

On the one-year anniversary of the attacks, Running Toward Danger provides a unique perspective on how the country and the world received most of its information in the first place. The foreword by Tom Brokaw, NBC News anchor and managing editor, praises American journalists for their courage and professionalism during one of the nation's most traumatic and horrifying days.

The book, published last week, is an outgrowth of a Newseum exhibition that opened Sept. 12. Compilers Cathy Trost, a former Journal reporter, and media critic Alicia C. Shepard have been documenting the media's response to Sept. 11, interviewing more than 100 journalists who covered the disaster sites in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.