At Ground Zero: 25 Stories from Young Reporters Who Were There [Paperback]

Sam Erman (Editor), Chris Bull (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 2002

The young reporters featured in this book were in the midst of a tragedy that most Americans felt deeply if from a distance. Amongst them are contributors from Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, The Advocate, Stars and Stripes, CNN, Reuters, the Stuyvesant Standard, Yomiuri Shimbun, India Abroad, the Columbia News Service, and more. Their powerful stories and individual experiences are personal in their details but universal in their impact. Many contributors were at the scene of the collapse, and all describe the anger, thrills, terror, depression, and redemption that accompanied their coverage. They relate who they interviewed, what they photographed, and how they presented the information they uncovered to editors and readers. Here, a Fox News telecaster describes her heartbreaking work interviewing victims’ families. An NPR radio correspondent records the sounds of crowds fleeing the collapse while a New York Daily News photographer is buried in rubble. South Asian- and Middle Eastern-Americans terrified by potential repercussions speak to a Newsday reporter, and a Columbia Journalism School student presents articles written while planning to drop out of journalism school because of the trauma. Like most Americans, these writers are not seasoned war correspondents. Instead, they are smart, articulate, sensitive adults writing personal stories, memoirs in miniature, of their coming-of-age as journalists during a time of national tribulation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Newsday reporter S. Mitra Kalita was at the dentist when she heard the news; she went to a market in Queens to hear the fears of a local Muslim butcher. Columbia School of Journalism student Matthew J. Mallone ate his Raisin Bran, watching CNN, before racing into the city to interview dazed survivors. The journalists whose stories Advocate correspondent Bull and Thunder's Mouth editor Erman gather together in a volume designed for the backpacks of j-school students and cub reporters muse on the powerful and conflicting feelings they experienced as they "struggled to reconcile the opportunities this story afforded them with the enormity of carnage and suffering they saw all around them."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In the aftermath of September 11, publishers have released a plethora of books on the event, most of which have been glossy tributes to the victims and rescue workers. This work provides a somewhat different perspective of that horrific day. Edited by Bull, a writer for the Advocate and coauthor of Perfect Enemies, and Erman, an editor at Thunder's Mouth Press, this is a collection of heartfelt narratives told by journalism students and fledgling reporters not seasoned professionals who contribute to various publications, including Slate, the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal, and many more. From the chilling and poignant diary notes of Petra Bartosiewicz in "From Nightmare to Redemption" to Chris Williams's moving "Facing the Fear," these firsthand accounts offer a glimpse into how these young reporters coped with and wrote about this terrifying attack on the nation, as well as its emotional consequences. Although worthwhile for anyone wanting to read more about September 11, this collection is most suitable for journalism school, academic, and larger public libraries. Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press (August 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560254270
• ISBN-13: 978-1560254270
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,315,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 25 authors: much sameness; with brilliant glimmers into Hell, April 14, 2003

By 

Drew W. Miller (Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: At Ground Zero: 25 Stories from Young Reporters Who Were There (Paperback)

How many times can one read that the author's cell phone (and every other one) failed to work after the collapse? Or learn that the boss wanted them to get right down to Ground Zero and call in the story (any story)? Or find the author confess to you that they wonder if what they are doing is ethical? Or that they found themselves crying days later? I didn't keep count, but the book has a lot of this repetitiveness.

And yet, there are enough morsels and pieces of material that come from this book to make it worth your time. After a while even some of the sameness strikes a chord of interest, (e.g., the question of ethics that keeps coming up again and again nags at the writers with none truly giving a clear justification for their questioning of victims' relatives.) But back to the morsels. You learn that the Moslem people of New York City were not united in either anger or celebration at the attack. Then, Benjamin Wallace-Wells' Chapter tells us how the terroism caused a strange type of black/white racial harmony that disgusted me. Without giving it away, let's just say it appeared that that day nothing could better bring it about than hatred for yet another race. And too, the fear the City's Moslems had after the attack is brought out. The horror of people in the buildings above the attack dealing with certain death and the jumpers and body parts and photographs that one author has never shown. These accounts made this book worth the effort of ignoring another dead cell phone report.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars More Phooey and a focus on emotionalism, October 27, 2009

By 

Meijer Goldstein (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: At Ground Zero: 25 Stories from Young Reporters Who Were There (Paperback)

too distract Americans away from doing a real investigation into 911. Fat chance though, nothing, not even hard evidence can compete with DENIAL.