A note about this package

Help for media professionals

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Dear Friends:

We've pulled together a series of articles and Internet links that could be helpful to you through the coming week or more as you deal with coverage of today's horrific terrorist attacks.

Two API seminars were in progress this morning when news of the New York attack broke. Members in the Copy Editing Boot Camp and the Circulation Executives seminar gathered in our McClatchy Reading Room to watch CNN and share the horror that all Americans felt as the sickening details emerged.

We watched in silence as the tragedy unfolded. Then we talked together about how we should respond. Did the seminar members want to go home? Some did, but it was, in fact, impossible. All Washington-area airports were closed. Amtrak trains were stilled. Rental cars had been snapped up by stranded travelers.

So, the seminars went on, with frequent breaks for updates on the breaking story.

Soon, we learned that one member of the copy editors seminar had been in the World Trade Center at the time of the years-ago attack terrorist attack there, and that her brother now is employed in an office near the top of one of the twin towers. As this is written, we do not know whether her brother escaped the attack.

A relative of an API staffer worked in the Trade Center, and his fate was unknown. We found that the daughter and son-in-law of another employee had been in the area of the Trade Center this morning. Luckily, they got away before the buildings crumbled.

As this is written on Tuesday afternoon, the seminars were grinding on. One member, though, pulled me aside and explained that he had a flight scheduled to Georgia tomorrow afternoon, but that now he didn't want to fly. We arranged passage via bus.

Our best to you all.

-- Bill Winter

William L. Winter, Ph.D.
President
The American Press Institute
bwinter@americanpressinstitute.org
703-715-3311

bwinter@americanpressinstitute.org