SOURCE: Rieder, Rem. “Rising to the Occasion.” American Journalism Review 23, no. 8 (October 2001): 6.

In the following essay, Rieder reviews the American news coverage of the September 11 attacks, noting that the day brought the importance of journalism into focus in a time of tragedy.

It was a moment that put everything in perspective.

All of the day-to-day concerns that can seem so large, so overwhelming, were diminished in a nanosecond.

The harrowing enormity of September 11, sheer horror on an unimaginable scale, concentrated the mind instantly on the things that really matter.

I was in my office that morning when author Haynes Johnson—Maryland journalism professor, American Journalism Review [AJR] contributing editor and pundit extraordinaire—stopped by to touch base. This was a day, Haynes said, when everyone will remember exactly where they were when they heard the news, an event on the scale of Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination...