We all know what the headlines were on September 12, 2001, but about the day before?
In New York, the news was about the election primaries that were supposed to be held that day (they got cancelled, along with everything else).
I remember it was a pretty slow news period. There were lots of stories about shark attacks over the summer even though fatal shark attacks were at historically normal levels that year. The big story was about a 24-year old woman who disappeared in Washington, DC, named Chandra Levy. She was an intern at the time. No one would have cared except that it was rumored that she was having an affair with Congressman Gary Condit and speculation was that he killed her. That was half true - the affair was real but she was killed by an aimless drifter.
It was the lil’wrekker’s 2nd birthday. Big news at our house.
Headlines* from the Charlotte Observer, 9/11/2001:
ECONOMIC FORECASTS STILL SHAKY FISCAL SOOTHSAYERS STAYING UPBEAT, BUT THINK GROWTH WILL COME SLOWLY `BEST HUNCH AND HOPE’ NOW THE BEST GUIDE FOR EXPERTS PROVEN WRONG, FED RESEARCHER SAYS
SENIORS WASTE BILLIONS BUYING SUPPLEMENTS UNSCRUPULOUS RETAILERS TARGET OLDER PEOPLE, EXPERTS TELL SENATE
DOLE SET TO BEGIN SENATE QUEST SALISBURY NATIVE SAYS SHE’LL VISIT EVERY N.C. COUNTY BY ELECTION DAY
CITY’S RED-LIGHT RUNNERS ARE GETTING THE PICTURE THEIR ACCIDENTS ARE DECLINING AT INTERSECTIONS WITH CAMERAS
MAN OK AFTER FALL, 3 DAYS WEDGED INTO STORM DRAIN
RELEASED SUSPECT ALSO HAS MURDER CHARGE PROSECUTOR MAY ASK JUDGE TO RAISE $13,500 BOND TO $1 MILLION
- Stories identified as being on page 1A at any rate.
Yes, the Chandra Levy murder story was the big news and had been for quite some time. I remember watching the news while working out very early that morning. It pains me to remember wishing for a news event big enough to knock it off top story status.
Oof, one of my local paper’s stories that day was “Defense official declares war on Pentagon.” It starts, “Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld started his week off with a bang.”
In Washington DC (and all over the country, I guess) the big story was the Chandra Levy case.
There was also a lot of brouhaha about the use of embryonic stem cells in scientific research.
If anyone has the stomach for it, the Internet Archive has an excellent collection of videos: September 11 Television Archive : Free Movies : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive
Many of them start well before the first tower was struck at 8:46, so you get a good idea of what was news that day. GMA, for example, was interviewing Sarah Ferguson.
In California, there was a manhunt for a kid/young man who’d killed several people. He said he’d killed them so he would be famous and people would talk about him forever.
In some small way, I’m glad he’s been forgotten by history.
Editted to add: I searched and found an ironic quote from his suicide message:
I remember listening to NPR while getting dressed for work that morning; there was a story about the Northern Alliance driving back the Taliban in Afghanistan.
I live in Denver and remember what the big news was supposed to be that day. I turned on the TV that morning specifically to see if there was news about Ed McCaffrey, a Broncos wide receiver who had broken his leg the evening before in a game against the NY Giants. The news was just cutting away from local coverage to a live view of the north tower of the World Trade Center spewing smoke.
After that I kinda forgot about football for a while.
Yeah, I remember reading something about that too. But by far, the Chandra Levy/Gary Condit story was the biggest thing in news, and had been for most of the summer. I was much like nelliebly and extremely tired of hearing about it.
A sports-related event occurring that weekend was the then-rumored return of Michael Jordan to basketball, playing for the Washington Wizards. My introduction to the attack began with Tony Bruno, a syndicated sports talk host, making the following crack:
“CNN is now turning from their wall-to-wall Michael Jordan coverage to bring us pictures of a building on fire.”
It got serious real fast after that as he and co-host Andrew Siciliano grasped what was happening.
Kinda interesting looking at the threads in the forums from that time to see what topics we were talking about:
The above link should take you to IMHO, showing a list of the end-dates of threads. Let’s just say that for pretty much all forums, there’s a LOT of closed threads all of a sudden.
Great Debates: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=7&pp=150&sort=lastpost&order=asc&daysprune=-1&page=38
(Your settings may cause some additional clicking to get to the exact date - the links worked for me, so I assume they’ll work for all.)
In Australia, there was a major story that got completely wiped off the radar by 9/11, namely that Ansett, one of only two airlines flying in Australia at the time, announced bankruptcy.
I’m reading a book about the Battle of the Bulge and strangely despite the enormity of the battle a lot of American and British papers literally had the battle on page 2 and domestic stories on the front page, such as FEARS OF BEER SHORTAGE IN PUBS OVER CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY.
Bizarre how such mundane headlines even back then override actual national emergencies.
Reading those old threads is reopening some barely-healed wounds.
In completely unrelated news, THOSE PEOPLE WHO HATED TARA IN BtVS ARE EVEN WRONGER NOW THAN THEY WERE IN 2001!
That’s what I remember. The media just went on and on and on about it. 9/11 put a stop to it instantly, like a swatted fly. I didn’t get solid information about it until I got home from work, because news websites were overwhelmed with traffic.
funny thing is i had just watched imus on msnbc and went to bed and maybe an hour later my roommate woke up and i turned it back on …
This is really not germane to the OP, but I remember this was an active GQ thread at the time of 9/11, started on Sept 4, 2001.
Impossible for every plane to land?
At that time, I worked in a manufacturing plant in the middle of cotton and soybean fields. As I went outside to the plant to make my rounds, I saw crop-dusters spraying the fields, and it was after they ordered all planes to be landed. By the time I returned to the office, there were no more crop-dusters.