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September 11's 6th Anniversary Coverage
By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 11, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 11, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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The local newspapers tackled the sixth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks in different ways. The Daily News offers most of its front cover to remember the day, while the Post gives some room to General Petraeus' Congressional testimony. The Post looks at how vibrant the Financial District is now, even after the devastating effects of the September 11, and the Daily News looks at how some families have decided to skip this year's September 11 commemoration ceremonies. Dorry Tompsett, whose husband's remains have never been recovered and who has been to the first five ceremonies, said, "Being on the ground with the immensity of the hole and being able to touch the ground - that was very important to me...To just go there for half a second and put a flower down on some part of that site that's a big construction area isn't the same thing."
The NY Times has a page one story about Mayor Bloomberg's role in getting the city to move beyond 9/11, calling his actions at different times clumsy, sensitive, eloquent, and optimistic. Since he declined to be interviewed, the Times re-ran a quote from 2002, "I think the Jews do it right. They have a headstone unveiling a year after the funeral, and that’s sort of the time that you sort of stop the mourning process and start going forward. And the 9/11 ceremonies, what I’m trying to do is that in the morning we will look back, remember who they were and why they died. And in the evening come out of it looking forward and say, ‘O.K., we’re going to go forward.’ ”
Newsday's cover illustrates the years between 1973 (when the World Trade Center was completed) and the present and there's an article about Seaford resident Ben Sliney, whose first day as national operations manager at the FAA's Air Traffic Command Center was on September 11. He "made the decision - never taken before or since - to ground every plane in the United States."
He is a handsome, amiable man who emanates self-assurance. He was just doing his job, he said.
History tells a different tale: that Sliney, unable to stand by as one plane after another dropped off the radar, took action in the face of a deafening lack of direction from FAA headquarters. And that later, he kept silent as U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta took credit for ordering the planes to land. (Mineta was not lying: The 9/11 Commission found that he had given that order - about an hour after Sliney did.)
Sliney, now retired, said that after Flight AA 77 hit the Pentagon, "I knew there was one way to sort out the good guys from the bad guys very quickly, and that was to land all the planes." Newsday also looks at the frustrations that downtown residents have about the progress of redevelopment.
The Daily News printed the names of all the victims. And there are a few editorials: The Post says never forget and that we need to win, the Daily News says the victims' names should be read during every anniversary and the Times has an op-ed slideshow of artists' depictions of Ground Zero.
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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