Author Dean Rotbart
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, The Wall Street Journal sustained a near-fatal blow when its main global newsroom was obliterated by fallout from the collapse of the Twin Towers.
Chaos reigned. Phone service was intermittent at best. For hours, it seemed certain that the paper s dynamic managing editor, Paul E. Steiger, had been killed or seriously injured.
Like shards of shattered glass, Journal reporters and editors were strewn throughout the five boroughs, New Jersey and Connecticut. Some had their own, harrowing stories to tell: showered in ash, walking through blood-soaked streets littered with decapitated bodies, and eyewitnesses to the mortifying specter of men and women leaping to their deaths from the top of the towers.