Narratives on 9/11

The Wall Street Journal won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting on their coverage of 9/11. Perhaps the most compelling story that was done was published on 9/12, titled "Terrorists Destroy World Trade Center, Hit Pentagon in Raid With Hijacked Jets."

The reason that this article is so compelling is because it is so raw, so personal. At the time, people were still trying to grasp what happened. This article uses both external and internal dialogue. An amazing example of the external dialogue comes early on:

"More than 100 floors above him at the Trade Center offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, someone put a call from the company's Los Angeles office on the speaker phone. What was happening there? The Los Angeles people heard someone say, 'I think a plane just hit us.' For more than five minutes, the Los Angeles people listened in horror as the sounds of chaos came through the speaker phone, people screaming, 'Somebody's got to help us. . . . We can't get out. . . . The place is filling with smoke.' Then the phone went dead."

I believe that Andrew Lenney, a financial analyst, said what was on most people's minds at the time. At first, he thought that it had to be a movie, it was that surreal:

"'It was coming down the Hudson. It was banking toward me. I saw the tops of both wings,' he said. 'It was turning to make sure it hit the intended target. It plowed in about 20 stories down dead center into the north face of the building. I thought it was a movie,' Mr. Lenney said. 'I couldn't believe it. It was such a perfect pyrotechnic display. It was symmetrical.'"

It is impossible to write anything about 9/11 and not have it contain dramatic action. To say that any one example is more dramatic than another is also impossible.

"The top floors of the buildings were engulfed in smoke, and people began leaping from windows, one at a time, hitting the ground, shrubbery, and awnings. On the Brooklyn Bridge, dust-covered New Yorkers trooping homeward jammed the pedestrian walkway. A man in shorts and a T-shirt, running toward Manhattan with a radio to his ear, shouted 'The Pentagon is burning, the Pentagon is burning!' and a young woman talking on her cellphone shouted, 'My mother works there. I don't know where she is. What is happening? What is happening?'"

The most accurate quote that came from all of this is from Sen. John Warner, who said, "I was in Washington when I heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This is another Pearl Harbor, and now your generation will have to meet the challenge."