September 10, 2002 - 9:26 p.m.
Note: This is the second in a five-day series on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, what we felt then and what we've learned in the year since.
The stories of Sept. 11 are many and varied -- stories of death, of heroism, of hope, of pain, of anger.
Journalists, myself included, spent most of that day engrossed in a daunting task: How do you tell a story of such magnitude as it unfolds? How do you compress such a huge event into 20 inches of column space or a few minutes of television? How do you ask someone to put their feelings into words, when you can barely understand your own feelings?
Journalists remove themselves from the story but in the case of Sept. 11, 2001, they also have a story.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. did an amazing 90-minute documentary on how journalists handled Sept. 11. I'll get to that later.
I was sent out to get reaction from the campus. Any time I approach someone to interview them, I pay attention to two things: whether they're doing something they wouldn't want interrupted and what kind of mood they're in. It doesn't always mean I'll leave them alone. I just like to know what I'm walking into.
The first stop was Mason-Abbott Hall. Some students were sitting in the study lounge, watching the news on CNN.
When they announced a fourth plane had crashed in Pennsylvania, a male student smashed his fist into the table next to him and shouted, "WHAT THE F*** IS GOING ON?!"
A crude way of saying what we all felt.
Next, the Union... people everywhere... the couches were full in the main gathering area. Some people even sat or layed across the floor, listening to a temporary television that had been set up.
Counselors were there, to help anyone who wanted to talk. But no one did.
They just watched.
After that, downtown Lansing. It was deserted, aside from three television news reporters set up in front of the Capitol, and, of all things, a hot dog vendor in front of Lansing City Hall, across the street.
It was so quiet down there, I could hear the news on the guy's radio, which must have been 100 yards away.
The Editor-in-Chief of the State News at the time, Mary Sell, said something I'll never forget.
"This is probably the shittiest thing we'll ever cover," she said.
I hope she's right.
I have to say I really identified with the reporters in the CBC documentary. What they experienced was far more severe, far more traumatic than anything I did.
But we were all in the same boat that day. We were all rolling through the same storm. The difference is that the reporters in New York City were strapped to the side of the ship, while I was comfortably observing from inside the cabin.
Watching the replayed footage from that day, many of the reporters seem strangely removed from the situation. They don't seem stunned, they don't seem shocked or even upset. They just talk and talk and talk about these amazingly horrid ideas. Bodies falling. People on fire.
But I guarantee you, it affected each one of them.
One of the photographers they interviewed was talking about the dust cloud sweeping down on her as one of the towers fell.
"I turned my lens and took ... no, stole ... a few shots," she said.
Stole. As though an image that powerful -- and surreal -- belonged to someone else or was somehow sacred.
When you find yourself in the thick of a breaking story, your emotions get put on pause. You focus on the job you have to do, and not what that job is.
The reporters and photographers and editors and producers and anchors and everyone else who covered Sept. 11 were deeply affected by that day.
Some of them found the right words and some of them maybe fell short.
But all of them gave a frightened world a little clearer picture of what was going on.
They gave a voice to those who so desperately needed to talk about what they experienced, and in the process, maybe learned more about their own voice as well.
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