by Douglas Hopper

Today, I - like many of us - am remembering 9-11 and how we spent the moments before and after terrorism became a central fear of our public lives.

In September 2001, I was a burned-out reporter. After a thrilling and exhausting 2 years at the online magazine Salon, I'd given my notice so I could take a deep breath and figure out another line of work.

Like a lot of Washington reporters at the time, I'd been grumbling for months about what looked to be a news, scandal and excitement-free Bush administration settling in for an unremarkable turn in the White House. But I HAD been looking forward to September 11th. The last piece I'd done for Salon, an interview with a Capitol Hill call girl for the September 10th issue, had generated page views and buzz, and a cable television news outlet had invited me to talk about it on air that day.

Secretly, I LOVED that part of my work: picking out a television-worthy outfit, having make-up artists fuss over my lip gloss, and ... the best part of all ... having a camera turn my way so I could gift the audience with my pithy opinions about whatever. So after I'd already met my early morning deadline, I wasn't pleased to get a call at home from my editor, thinking he might scuttle my farewell appearance with real work.

"You have to turn on the television," he said.

I tuned in and saw the first of those horrible, surreal scenes: a plane on fire, lodged into the upper floors of one of the Twin Towers. Just as news anchors were gasping about the terrible "accident," talking about tricky flight paths over Manhattan and the dangers of over-worked pilots, the other plane slammed into the second Tower on live television, and I - like everyone watching - suddenly learned we were at war.

At that moment, I was so grateful to have the job I'd just forsaken. Had I not had my work, I would've spent the day in tearful, twitchy panic, trying to pinpoint the whereabouts of every member of my extended family, which was spread over what I'd realized that morning was the target-rich area around Washington (days later, I found out 2 of them worked at the Pentagon; one was on vacation, and the other was driving to his office and saw the attack from his car).

Instead, all day, I stayed on the phone, stayed on my keyboard, my editor barking out every sliver of information our team could find and verify so I could help keep our site up-to-date. People weren't reading us that day for the well-turned phrases or Washington characters I'd loved writing about; they read to get whatever sturdy bit of truth they could hold onto in a time of chaos.

Among the things I remember so vividly about the days afterward was the conviction I and so many reporters shared that 9-11 would change the media forever. Journalists would have to know their facts, stories would have to be useful and serious, and there would be no more television invitations to talk about call girl stories, or what the president's daughters were wearing, or the latest outrageous, meaningless comment by someone you've never heard of before.

With all we still don't understand eight years later, at least we do know how that turned out.

 

Among the things I remember so vividly about the days afterward was the conviction I and so many reporters shared that 9-11 would change the media forever.