(Written 2 weeks after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks)


I grew up in New York City and began my career at CNN’s old Northeast Bureau, at Number 2 World Trade Center. I loved those towers. I would wander through them often, taking in the sights, discovering their outsized features and little surprises: the bigger-than-life lobbies that brought the outdoors indoors; the observation floor, with cute dugout seats flush against the floor-to-ceiling windows. The signatures of Philippe Petit and George Willig on the outside railing (Petit walked a tightrope between the two towers. Willig climbed up the side in a homemade harness). Seeing it all destroyed hit me like a medicine ball to the gut, and I can’t watch the pictures anymore, it hurts so much. I also can’t get the thousands of victims out of my mind. They were my neighbors, people I probably met on the streets and in the subways all the time. I’ve lost a part of my home, my past, and my heart, and I’m in no mood to get over it just yet.

Most newspeople aren’t allowed to engage in immediate or prolonged grief. We focus first on the job, no matter how grotesque, get it done, fall apart later, and then go right back to work.

If your newsroom was typical during those awful days, you’ve gone through a wave of round-the-clock shifts, general chaos, bad food, raw nerves and flaring tempers. You’ve also done lots of seat-of-the-pants writing, the kind that just flows out of you when you can’t even think, when all you really want to do is scream. Some of it may turn out to be your best work of the year. And some of it may be so bad, you’ll never want to look at it again.

Well, go ahead and pat yourself on the back for the good stuff, and forgive yourself for the bad stuff. 80 million people watched us and learned from us. Maybe a lot of what we did wasn’t pretty, but overall we should be very proud. We held ourselves together and helped the country do the same.

So, now what?

Newswriting will be different for awhile, perhaps a long while. A new seriousness is filtering through the business, and we need to adapt. The old ways just don’t make sense anymore.

With the attacks still gnawing at us and war taking shape, can you imagine filling a newscast today with car chases or a celebrity’s movements or similar stuff that now seems so trivial? Impossible.

It’s equally ludicrous, and now perhaps even morally offensive, given what we’ve been through, to demean any story by using trivial language.

How can we keep writing junk like, “Battle lines are being drawn” in stories about the federal budget debate, when REAL battles are going on in the Persian Gulf? How can we say some kid who pulled a cat from a tree is being “hailed as a hero” when we now know what REAL heroes look like? How can we ever again call a house fire “spectacular” without feeling and sounding completely foolish? Lazy language was always a major newswriting sin. It should have always irked you. Now it should embarrass you.

Here are some more phrases we may want to rethink:

Plunged, Plummeted, Fell To His Death - These were always moronic, over-dramatized ways of describing a person falling down and getting killed. After seeing those poor terrified people tumbling out of 100th story windows, there is no way these silly words can ever be considered adequate or appropriate again.

Clinging to Life, Fighting For His/Her Life, Lucky To Be Alive - Once upon a time, these terms may have communicated a true sense of urgency. No longer. Overuse has turned them into caricatures. People laugh at them. That’s reason enough to stop using them. When we write about human tragedy, large or small, none of our language should unwittingly evoke derision. Especially with those 3000 victims fresh in our minds.

Firestorm of Controversy - Non-conversational, bad hyperbole, and with visions of flaming jumbo jets still in our heads, no longer acceptable.

Reduced To Rubble - For most storm/hurricane/tornado/riot stories, it’s a trite, overused term. For the Word Trade Center, it’s a pathetic understatement.

Under Fire, Under Siege - The day is coming, unfortunately, when these phrases will apply, in a literal, battlefield sense. But it is sheer exaggeration and silliness to refer to a troubled Congressman, indicted businessman or controversial mayor this way.

Watched In Horror - No one watches terrible events in joy, mirth or indifference. And now the term feels meaningless. What we saw on September 11th took us way beyond horror.

Team Coverage - We’ve just lived through perhaps the ultimate “Team Coverage” story, in which every one of us worked our tails off to bring the information to the people. Using this consultant-driven phrase for the terror attack stories is beyond redundant. Using it to say you’ve sent a second reporter to a car crash, is ridiculous.


We’re in a new environment that demands new standards. More than ever, we need to tell stories as they are, in clear, simple, unambiguous, forthright, conversational English. No more tricks. No more shortcuts.

Quite suddenly, TV news has become important again. It can’t be treated as mindless entertainment anymore. Millions are now watching out of need, instead of curiosity. This, of course, could revert with time, as we all try to settle back into our normal lives. On the other hand, we may never be fully “normal” again. I feel profoundly sad about that, but I also see an opportunity. Let this once-inconceivable nightmare remind us why we became newspeople in the first place. Let’s put that pride and sense of purpose in every story we write from now on.