--- title: Behind the Scenes: TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover Story | TIME description: Deputy Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs recounts her experience writing of TIME’s original 9/11 cover story, with the help of reporters across the country canonical: https://time.com/video/PEonnIyg/ og:title: Behind the Scenes: TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover Story og:description: Deputy Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs recounts her experience writing of TIME’s original 9/11 cover story, with the help of reporters across the country og:url: https://time.com/video/PEonnIyg/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/PEonnIyg/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Behind the Scenes: TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover Story twitter:description: Deputy Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs recounts her experience writing of TIME’s original 9/11 cover story, with the help of reporters across the country twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/PEonnIyg/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Behind the Scenes: TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover Story > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Behind the Scenes: TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover Story [Watch (HLS stream): Behind the Scenes: TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover Story](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/PEonnIyg.m3u8) (6:48)  _Published 2011-09-09. Deputy Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs recounts her experience writing of TIME’s original 9/11 cover story, with the help of reporters across the country_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:17 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [The Story Behind TIME's 'Climate Is Everything' Cover](/video/hXxmPKGM/) ### The Story Behind TIME's 'Climate Is Everything' Cover [Behind The Scenes of TIME's Drones Cover](/video/Hu3D9kBc/) ### Behind The Scenes of TIME's Drones Cover [Behind the Scenes of Time's Interstellar Cover Shoot](/video/T8DzvVHZ/) ### Behind the Scenes of Time's Interstellar Cover Shoot --- ## Transcript I was at home up in West Chester. My four year old was home sick and [ SOUND ] it was that beautiful day. And the phone rang, and I picked it up. And I recognized Michael Duffy's voice, our bureau chief in Washington. And he said, turn on the TV. So we were where everyone was. [ SOUND ] We were watching and we were horrified and the phone rang probably next at about, [ UNKNOWN ] maybe 10: 30. And it was Jim Kelley, the managing editor of the magazine. And Jim had this marvelous calm. Almost. You know, sort of solicitous. So, how are you doing? With the understanding that, of course, we both knew, we were both native New Yorkers. He had grown up in Queens, I'd grown up in Manhattan. This was very much an attack on our home. And, and yet he managed to have this, this extremely kind of calm controlled tone. And. He said, " Let me tell you what we're thinking about doing ", and he explained how he had investigated whether it would be possible for us to publish a special issue of the magazine. Until he was looking into whether all the logistics of that, can we get the printing capacity in, you know, to print four million issues of the magazine when we're not normally scheduled to. Could we get the paper? Could we even... Transmit. So, so there were a lot of logistical things to work out. While that was being sorted out, he said I, I wanted to know if you, you were game to write for it. I said of course, which story do you want me to? He said, well I only want one story, and that was sort of startling, he said, he said, look, there is so much we don't know. And we won't know in the next 24 hours. He says, I don't want you to worry about who might have done, what our response might be, all of the things that we can't possibly know today. He said, I just want you to tell the story of what happens today, what happens in the next 24 hours. And he says, everyone else at the magazine will go out and report that and file to you. But that's, think of it as a time capsule. You are just going to take a snapshot of today. He knew that where I was, it was a beautiful fall day, and I couldn't smell the smoke from where I was, I couldn't hear the sirens from where I was. And having just that amount of distance From it, not withstanding, you know, waiting through the afternoon, to hear about my neighbors, we ended up losing three neighbors that day. It wasn't that it wasn't touching us, but it was nothing like, what it was like for the people who were, here in this building, you know, 50 blocks, north of the, of the towers. And, so, everyone in, this building, in, midtown Manhattan. Even as, building all around the city are being evacuated, even as the sound of sirens, was everywhere. Even as the smell of smoke, was, drifting up town, even as people, worried, for, their family, their safety, their friends who worked downtown, even as all of these. Pressures and uncertainties were, were rising. Everyone just went to work, from, like, every researcher, every reporter, every writer, every correspondent, every editor, fanned out across the city to the hospitals downtown to the police department. The people in Washington, the same thing. The emails started coming in within a few hours and [ UNKNOWN ] continued coming in all through the day, all through the night, overnight. Probably you know a 1, 000, 1, 200 messages by the time we were done. And. It was clear to me early on that there was, this was not a story that you, there would be time to outline. Or to write a beginning, and a middle and an end. That it would just. The story never got written. It sort of just got put together. It wasn't just our reporters based in New York and Washington. Our reports all across the country. Were sending in dispatches as well. And that really told you something about the event that was not clear to us when we were right in the middle of it. The parents in Birmingham, Alabama went and got their kids out of school. That Mt. Rushmore was shut down and monuments all across the country and the Sears Tower getting evacuated that nobody knew what this was. Nobody knew, how widespread, the threat might be. And so, it was being experienced all over the country. People ask me about when did the, when did the, sort of, the shock of the whole thing hit me. And, it's. While it's nothing like what a surgeon does in one sense the, I felt very emotionally removed from it at the time. I felt I have a job to do, I know what I need in order to do it which is mainly going to be a great deal of coffee, and, and I was not I, I kept myself at, at an emotional distance. The response that I cared about most came at about 6 a. m. Thursday morning when the phone rang, and it was Jim. And he said, I'm holding the issue in my hand, and I don't think you'll ever be prouder of. Anything we've done. But what I then heard again and again and again after that was people saying I've put this in our family album. I've put this in the family Bible. I've saved this. Everyone talked about saving it. I'm saving this for my children. and. That, that this was something they needed. And that they knew that they wanted to keep. So I wrote the introduction to the special issue that we're doing and what I love about it, and I love the approach that we ended up taking, is that. When I was writing ten years ago, by definition, I'm looking at this from the outside. We now went back to all the people who were on the inside. And there is a certain closure in that. I feel like, now, this issue, in their words, can tell all of the things that we couldn't know. Then, about what really happened and what it really felt like and what they were thinking as they made decisions that were literally life and death decisions. And so, hearing them talk about what happened and what that was like 10 years later is just extraordinary. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Behind the Scenes: TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover Story","description":"Deputy Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs recounts her experience writing of TIME’s original 9/11 cover story, with the help of reporters across the country","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/PEonnIyg/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2011-09-09T17:40:32.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/PEonnIyg.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/PEonnIyg/","duration":"PT6M48S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/PEonnIyg/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```