The young reporters featured in this book were in the midst of a tragedy that most Americans felt deeply if from a distance. Amongst them are contributors from Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, The Advocate, Stars and Stripes, CNN, Reuters, the Stuyvesant Standard, Yomiuri Shimbun, India Abroad, the Columbia News Service, and more. Their powerful stories and individual experiences are personal in their details but universal in their impact. Many contributors were at the scene of the collapse, and all describe the anger, thrills, terror, depression, and redemption that accompanied their coverage. They relate who they interviewed, what they photographed, and how they presented the information they uncovered to editors and readers. Here, a Fox News telecaster describes her heartbreaking work interviewing victims' families. An NPR radio correspondent records the sounds of crowds fleeing the collapse while a New York Daily News photographer is buried in rubble. South Asian- and Middle Eastern-Americans terrified by potential repercussions speak to a Newsday reporter, and a Columbia Journalism School student presents articles written while planning to drop out of journalism school because of the trauma. Like most Americans, these writers are not seasoned war correspondents. Instead, they are smart, articulate, sensitive adults writing personal stories, memoirs in miniature, of their coming-of-age as journalists during a time of national tribulation.
