Newspaper Response Recalls Pearl Harbor

By: Joe Strupp From Detroit to Los Angeles, daily newspapers across the nation brought news of Tuesday's devastating terrorist attacks on New York and Washington to readers via a number of special sections and extra editions in numbers unseen since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor almost 60 years ago.

Within hours of two hijacked planes crashing into the World Trade Center and another striking the Pentagon, dozens of newspapers across the country hit the streets with extras that chronicled the two-city attacks, federal responses, and personal accounts of the tragedy.

"It is a critical story for readers, and we wanted to provide coverage as quickly as possible," said Los Angeles Times spokeswoman Martha Goldstein, who said her paper's eight-page special edition hit the streets shortly after noon PDT. She added that 25,000 copies of the extra offered breaking news, history of the World Trade Center, and the opinions of experts on terrorism.

Other newspapers distributing special editions included the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and both The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.

"This is an event the magnitude of which we may not be able to asses for a while," said Heath Meriwether, publisher of the Free Press, which distributed 35,000 copies of a special 16-page edition this afternoon. "An attack on two American icons is incomprehensible."

The Chronicle, which beefed up coverage in its afternoon edition, also bumped up its afternoon press run from the usual 10,000 copies to 100,000, according to Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Phil Bronstein. He said the paper stressed the overview of what the attacks meant to national security.

"What struck me is how unprepared we are in the United States," said Bronstein, whose newspaper background includes stints covering Central America, Southeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf War. "We want to reflect how this has changed life dramatically and how security is now threatened."