Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, started out as a typical day at the Daily Kent Stater. 鶹ý student reporters were preparing for their daily assignments. Editors were planning their daily meetings. But, by the time Daily Kent Stater staff got to the newsroom on Tuesday, they were faced with just one story: a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Carl Schierhorn, now retired, who served as the faculty advisor for the Daily Kent Stater at the time, recalls the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks being a pivotal writing experience for his reporters and editors.
“Everything changed that day. As a journalist, you put yourself on autopilot when you got a story like this,” Schierhorn said. “You've got human emotions, but you sort of shut them down to do your job and it can be really hard.”
Andy Netzel was the editor-in-chief for the Daily Kent Stater, and he said that everyone in the newsroom had emotions that were flowing but mostly behind closed doors.
“We all kind of suppressed it, and then brought it behind the closed door to have our own personal freakouts of our own concerns,” Netzel said.
One concern Netzel shared with other reporters and editors was being able to put one story into perspective for Kent State students and the Kent community.
“9/11 was ‘how do we contextualize this big story?’” Netzel said. “And then 9/12 going forward, it became ‘What can we add on and what can we do to share this experience?’”
Schierhorn had told his staff that there was only one story to focus on at the time, and Netzel took that advice and ran with it.
Netzel wrote the article, “There’s a method in the madness” featured in the Sept. 12 edition of the paper that explained why the Daily Kent Stater would only publish articles related to the attack that day because, “We have a responsibility to our readers to tell stories that affect you the most ... This is the biggest thing that’s happened since most of us have been alive. And that’s pretty scary.”
Much of the national coverage for the paper was pulled from Associated Press reports, but the Daily Kent Stater staff focused on the impact it had on the local community.
Some of the featured articles on Sept. 12 included opinion pieces highlighting Kent State professors’ insights on the attack, editorials highlighting the strength of the United States, and news stories highlighting how students and the community were dealing with the attacks. These stories include coverage of candlelight vigils, to the Kent State community, and heightened police security and counseling announcements.
As the week moved on, non-9/11 stories were appearing, but staff still covered how the 鶹ý Airport and student pilots were affected, highlighting connections between 9/11 and the events surrounding May 4, 1970, recapped community memorial services, and featured how professors used the tragedy to provide lessons in the classroom.
Nick Gehring, an editorial writer for the Daily Kent Stater, remembers an odd feeling following the days after the attacks.
“I think, at least for the country, it was kind of depressing for a while, and it felt very weird just trying to go on to a normal life,” Gehring said. “I remember it being like that for weeks after 9/11.”
Gehring said that by Sept. 20, 2001, the newsroom had almost returned to regular stories and business, but 9/11 was something that had defined the rest of the editorial staff’s college years and careers in journalism.
"9/11 had ramifications throughout that year,” Gehring said. “Whether it's through war or through politics, I would say for the four years that I was in college, you know, three or four of those years were defined by 9/11.”
“It was kind of a surreal moment that was very outside the normal student journalism experience, and, looking back, we had such an amazing staff,” Netzel said. “I was so proud of how everybody approached that day and really thought more broadly about the Kent State students and their responsibility to tell that story.”
The Daily Kent Stater, now the Kent Stater, continues to cover campus, regional and national news for the benefit of the Kent State community. Read more at .