A biz journalist remembers Sept. 11

Ilana Lowery, who was named editor of the Phoenix Business Journal one month before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, writes what it was like that day at the American City Business Journals paper.

Lowery writes, “I was leaving for work that morning when our former graphics designer called me to see if I was watching TV. I normally watch national news, but I literally was headed out the door. He sounded panicked, very upset and wanted to know if the staff should go into work. I had no idea what he was talking about. I turned on the TV right as the plane hit the second tower. None of the news reports could definitively say what was happening, but it was catastrophic. I stood there frozen and watched.

“It must have been about 30 minutes later, after listening to the live news reports, that I realized I needed to get down to the paper because this was something we had to jump on — despite the fact we weren’t even sure what really had happened. Clearly, there was going to be local impact to what had just happened.

“I remember it was a Tuesday and we go to print on Wednesday afternoon. Between the adrenalin and the ink flowing through our reporters’ blood, we started looking at how we would cover the tragedy in print and online. We had the TV on in the newsroom and reporters were watching the coverage online. Once we had a game plan, everyone went to work. We covered just about every local business angle we could for print that week. Our online coverage continued for what seemed like months.”

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