In Washington, D.C., Sept. 11, 2001, began as a gorgeous day — bright and sunny. My wife, a lawyer, had flown out earlier that morning from D.C. to Detroit for a client meeting. I had the TV on when the news broke about the first attack on the World Trade Center.

My first thought was that it was an accident; in Richard Kluger’s magisterial book “The Paper,” I had read the gripping story of how reporters had covered the crash of an airplane into the Empire State Building during World War II. I knew what happened that day would be major news, so I rushed into the shower, quickly got dressed, and took the Metro to work.

As a reporter, I knew the job demands that you rush towards the news, not away from it. Most of the city would go in the opposite direction at their first opportunity; at the end of the day, I remember walking home rather than taking the Metro because, with the attack on the Pentagon, everybody felt we could become a target if we were in an enclosed space.

It was a Tuesday, and my publication, National Journal — a weekly magazine — had already finished much of the next issue, which was to be put to bed on Thursday, Sept. 13. We immediately went into a meeting to figure out what to write. It was the only time we ever scrapped an issue, and put one together start to finish, in two days. I always used to think it was National Journal’s finest hour. As we came out of the meeting — there were no cellphones then, nor was there a TV in the conference room — we learned that the towers had fallen. I was flabbergasted. How could that happen? Literally, how?

In the meantime, I had to worry about Elisabeth. At some point, we managed to connect by phone, so I knew she was safe. But with the shutdown of the air system, she would be stuck in Detroit until she was able to drive back to D.C. with a work colleague several days later. So I was alone, and unable to sleep. So I threw myself into work.

For National Journal’s new issue, I contributed to an article titled, “Coping, or Not, With the Horror.” I interviewed Steven Strogatz, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University, who said that in the United States, “everybody is two steps from someone who was murdered, I would think.” I had recently interviewed Edward Linenthal, a professor of religion and American culture at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and one of the leading authorities on the commemorations of tragedy. For Government Executive magazine, one of my freelance outlets, I called him back to ask how this day would be remembered. Linenthal had recently written a book about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but for my article, dated Sep. 12, 2001, he said that event, “as incredibly powerful as it was, did not … disrupt the daily life of the nation. … I think (Sept. 11) is terra nova.”

I had initially planned during lunch hour on Sept. 11 to do an interview for the arts section of Washington City Paper. Obviously I had to cancel it, but I made a point of rescheduling it, and the article eventually came out four months later. I had also been planning to make a three-week, 20-odd story reporting trip later that month to the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado and Idaho. Planning such a trip — something I did twice a year — was a painstaking, weeks-long process that involved collecting story ideas, getting them approved by editors, finding sources, setting up interviews and, in the days before GPS, getting turn-by-turn driving directions in advance. With the airlines shut down for who knew how long, I needed to cancel all of those interviews. But as with the arts story, I made a point of rescheduling the trip for about a year later. It was my small act of journalistic resistance.

Louis Jacobson chief correspondent for PolitiFact.

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