📰 EXTRA EXTRA read all about it! | JC MacDonald
I was working in IT as a systems administrator for the Calgary Herald on September 11, 2001. I was on the morning shift that day which started at 8AM. I didn’t listen to the radio much back then and wasn’t aware what was going on until I got to work. The place was a zoo when I got in.
Myself and a coworker were assigned to find as many photos of what was going on in NYC as we could. These were the days before search engines worked like they do today. The newspapers back then still used ‘the wire’ to receive photos via satellite networks. Between the newswires and the internet, I did find lots of pictures that weren’t on mainstream news websites at the time. It’s difficult to paint the picture of how primitive and ‘Wild West’ the internet was before the arrival of social media. This was years before smartphones or digital cameras with Wi-Fi hit the market.
You may recall the movie trope of the kid shouting “EXTRA EXTRA read all about it!” while holding newspapers up in one hand.
That day, the editorial department released an EXTRA as free press to be distributed downtown about what info was known of the happenings in NYC. We focused on the LRT lines and we had employees volunteer to pass them out. We had that EXTRA on the downtown streets before 1PM.
A day I won’t forget.
