Eight years ago
Eight years ago, I was doing work for the NIE department at the Dayton Daily News. The Web site person had gone home for the day (this is when newspapers only updated their Web sites once a day and everything was done at night, after the print edition was put to bed.) Apparently, I was the only one in the building who could create, post and manage Web site content independently.
The photo editor at that time, Jeff Adams, raced down to my floor and begged my director to “borrow” me for the day, or until they could reach the Web site producer and get her back in to work. From about 9:30am until 4:00pm, I was updating www.DaytonDailyNews.com, pulling off photos and 9/11 stories from the AP wire and posting updates as fast as we could. In 2001, the CNN.com servers were overwhelmed and people were turning to their local newspaper Web sites for updates.
I remember the day going slow and fast all at the same time. I remember how calm and professional the newsroom was, how the entire team become hyper-focused on getting local news coverage, processing photos and assembling the “bulldog” edition of the newspaper. I remember seeing a deluge of news stories on the AP wire still happening everywhere else in the world that nobody anywhere was reporting.
I remember stepping out into downtown Dayton from the Ludlow DDN bank building and how quiet traffic was and how slowly everyone walked.
And then I went home. And went to work the next day. And the next and the next.
Tags: 9/11, Dayton, Dayton Daily News, NIE
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