I’ve enjoyed many, many wonderful experiences while working for the Reno News & Review over the years, but I’ve also experienced some frustrations.
Some of those most memorable frustrations involve big, breaking news. Over our nearly 33-year history, we’ve broken many stories, and have won many hundreds of awards for our coverage—but we have never been a publication that covers breaking news as it’s breaking. For various reasons—resources, our format, etc.—we cover those big stories, but we do so a bit later, with investigation, analysis and powerful narratives.
The fact that we don’t cover breaking news as it’s breaking, however, upsets some readers. During the Hawk Fire, I fielded several angry emails from readers, going off on us for continuing our usual coverage as fires burned.
Such was also the case in September 2001. At that time, the RN&R was a weekly newspaper that posted everything in that weekly newspaper online—and nothing else. (I was the editor, and I didn’t even have posting access to our then-still-new website.) We sent the paper to press on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, so when Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, arrived, that week’s issue was largely complete. As the day’s events developed, and it became clear that we were in the midst of one of the most significant events in our nation’s history, my staff and I had a choice: Do we scramble to cover something related to that day’s events, within just a few hours, knowing that whatever stories we managed to assemble would be two days old by the time the Sept. 13 print edition started hitting streets? Or do we largely send the Sept. 13 issue to press as planned?
With the exception of my editor’s note, and Deidre Pike’s “A View From the Fray” column, we sent the Sept. 13 issue to press—with a Burning Man piece on the cover, and a story about the struggles of the Siena casino as the lead news piece—as planned.
In that Sept. 13 editor’s note, I wrote:
Where were you when you heard about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center?
It’s a question that will be asked and answered by us all for the rest of our lives.
I was sound asleep about 6 a.m. when my colleague and friend, Kelley Lang, called me. She was frantic. She had woken up early that Tuesday morning to finish writing a story and turned on the television shortly after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. As she watched live, the second plane rammed the other tower, exploding in a fireball.
Her husband, Dave, was in Chicago on business and was supposed to be just getting on a plane. Kelley, understandably stunned and worried, called me. I groggily answered the phone.
I couldn’t believe what she had said. I got up, turned on my TV and saw the view of the New York skyline, with two towers damaged and in flames. They soon showed the video that we’ve all seen by now of the second plane hitting the building.
This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.
My generation has never seen anything like this on American soil. I am not sure that any generation has seen anything like this on American soil. It’s surreal. It’s scary. It makes most things that we do in our day-to-day lives seem kind of silly.
But there’s nothing to be gained by sitting in front of a television or computer screen. As horrible as the chaos is, we have to go on.
That’s why this issue of the News & Review, with the exception of this column and Deidre Pike’s View From the Fray, is exactly the same as we planned it before all of this happened. We seriously considered scrapping our current cover story and/or our news stories and mobilizing our staff to cover how the terrorism that struck the East Coast is affecting Northern Nevada. But in the end, we decided against it for now.
Yeah, a controversy over a piece of art at Burning Man and the issue of a struggling new hotel-casino seem frivolous in comparison to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and their aftermath. But they are important, if for no other reason than that we need to keep on going. Our lives go on—granted, they may not quite be the same, at least for a while. But they go on. And so does the RN&R.
Next week, we’ll bring you that coverage of how these heinous acts of terrorism have affected Northern Nevada. But we’ll also bring you our normal film, food and theater reviews, arts stories and other news.
Because that’s our job. And we need to go on.
You can see how some readers reacted in the letters sections of our Sept. 20 and Sept. 27 issues. The editor of the Sagebrush at the time more or less called for me to be fired.
After 25 more years of journalism experience, I’d make the same decision today. And when I look at the stories we published a week later, in the Sept. 20 edition, I am incredibly proud of them.
Deidre Pike interviewed Joseba Zulaika, then the director of Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno—who is also an expert on political violence. Adrienne Rice explored how locals were faring emotionally after the attacks. I did a piece looking at the history of terrorism in Reno.
Kelley Lang beautifully covered the fear at the Northern Nevada Muslim Center in Sparks. The piece was headlined “Turning on our own.” The lede:
While local churches and synagogues were joining in a national day of prayer and remembrance last week, members of the Northern Nevada Muslim Center in Sparks were also congregating. Unlike the other groups, however, they were surrounded by police officers and their vehicles.
About six Sparks Police Department cars surrounded the building, and an officer stood near the doorway. The mosque had received several threatening phone calls in wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. A window on the east side of the building had been broken shortly after the attacks.
That afternoon, members gathered for a service for a small child who had died after an illness. Nadiah Beekun was sad but composed as she watched the child’s tiny, white coffin being carried into the hearse.
“I think about the children and how many of their parents didn’t make it home,” said Beekun of the terrorist attacks. Beekun, a U.S.-born citizen, was carrying a box filled with red, white and blue ribbons that she was passing out to the congregation.
“Muslims across the country are handing out ribbons in support, because [the United States] is our country,” she said.
As people left the building, they carried these symbols of patriotism. A picture of the American flag was taped to the window of a pickup truck in the parking lot. Children talked to a police officer, and worshippers shook hands with the men in uniform.
“As Muslims, we feel very sad,” said Mohammad Gharaibeh. “It was very hard for us to see what happened, especially seeing the buildings falling down.”
For those readers angry about our relative lack of Hawk Fire coverage as the fire burned: We have about a dozen pieces in the works that will tell incredible stories and answer a lot of questions locals have about the fire in the aftermath—because telling stories and answering questions is what we do here at the RN&R.
—Jimmy Boegle
Read this newsletter online at RenoNR.com!