‘We knew we had work to do’: When the world changed, the Journal Star went to work.

The initial report, which later turned out to be incorrect, indicated a small plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

Stoeffler absorbed the news as something that would inevitably appear in the next day's paper as he continued his commute into the Lincoln Journal Star newsroom at 926 P St.

There, the editor in charge of dozens of reporters, photographers, copy editors, and others at Nebraska's second-largest newspaper found a small group of staff members huddled around a television.

As he settled in for what many at the newspaper believed would be another Tuesday covering the Capital City, Stoeffler said he remembers hearing the exact moment the world changed.

"I heard this sort of loud gasp," Stoeffler recalled. "They had just witnessed live the second plane hitting the South Tower. That's of course when we all knew this was not an accident; there's something major going on here."

As the world ground to a halt, with millions glued to live news reports on their TVs, the Journal Star's reportorial machinery shifted into gear.

Reporters scheduled to be off that day felt their news instincts kick in, Stoeffler said, appearing suddenly in the newsroom asking how they could help.

"It was a breathtaking kind of moment," he said, "and also one of those moments when everybody rallied and knew we had work to do."

The top editors at the Journal Star — including Stoeffler and city editor Peter Salter, as well as the heads of other departments — met briefly with publisher Bill Johnston where the decision was made to publish a special edition.

Using the Journal Star's new printing press, which had produced its first editions of the paper a few months earlier, Stoeffler was confident the staff could get an extra edition into the hands of readers by noon.

Reporters went to work calling up sources and fanning out across the city to talk to anyone with a perspective on the terrible events unfolding nearly 1,300 miles away — as well as what it might mean for life in Nebraska.

"People were desperate to know what happened," Salter said. "They wanted to know what it meant and it was our job to provide that to them, so we just kind of flooded the zone."

The Journal Star used newly made inroads with Lincoln's Middle Eastern community to talk about their fears of retaliation. Journalists spoke with educators about how to discuss the attacks with their children. They spoke with law enforcement officials and blood donation centers.

"A lot of people had a lot of good ideas," Salter said. "Even though this happened in New York and Pennsylvania and Washington, I think we all understood it had an effect on all of us."

Reporter Ken Hambleton, who had jumped from covering Husker football following an Alamo Bowl blowout of Northwestern to the Nebraska Legislature that January, was looking forward to a quiet fall.

Throwing his golf clubs over his shoulder, Hambleton was nearly out the door on his way to the links when his wife, Journal Star sports reporter Ryly Jane Hambleton, stopped him.

"I said, 'See you later, I've got the day off,' and she said, 'No, you don't have the day off, you're going to the newsroom,'" Hambleton said. "I asked why and she said, 'New York is on fire.'"

"Then we saw the second plane," he said.

Hambleton arrived in the newsroom a short time later where he was assigned to check out a report of several planes making emergency landings at the Lincoln Airport following a ground stop imposed over the U.S. and Canada.

Speeding to the airport, Hambleton arrived just in time to see four buses pulling through a police checkpoint. He whipped his car around and followed the convoy to the Salvation Army.

There, Hambleton met the passengers of Flight 81, which had taken off from Newark, New Jersey, bound for San Francisco an hour before Flight 93, one of the four planes that was hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists that morning.

"I remember just standing there trying to figure out how to talk to people that are crying and just kind of in shock," Hambleton said. "Everyone was crowded around a small TV and trying to call family and friends back home, but the phones weren't working."

Two passengers Hambleton interviewed, Phil Vozzo and Craig Ostroff, told him they had switched to the earlier flight in an effort to quicken their trip home. 

When they landed in Lincoln, thousands of miles from their destination, the passengers of Flight 81 learned Flight 93 had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board.

Vozzo, a United Airlines employee, knew people, coworkers, who had been aboard the doomed flight. Hambleton spoke to Vozzo later after he was able to get a hold of his son in Virginia.

Hambleton ultimately ended his workday at 11 p.m. His recounting of Vozzo and Ostroff's day in Lincoln printed in the next day's paper under the headline "Narrow Escape."

"It was one of those days where you're exhausted because you're working your butt off, but everything also was going way too fast," Hambleton said. "It was a rush."

Salter, who left the newsroom on Sept. 11 after the press rumbled to life late that night with the next morning's paper, said Journal Star reporters churned out 24 local bylines with coverage related to the terrorist attacks that day.

He was back early the next morning, and the day after that, and the day after that. There were weeks following 9/11 where 90% of the Journal Star's local coverage centered on the impacts of the attacks, covering everything from security changes to rescue workers who traveled to New York City.

"It was one of the most memorable days in all the years I worked in papers," Salter said. "At the time, people certainly looked to the paper to let them know what was going on and that was a pretty big responsibility.

"We had a staff that turned out and did what it could to give readers what they needed," he added. "I think we worked our asses off to tell as many stories as we could to put this in perspective and give it some kind of meaning for people."

Stoeffler, who is now the chief executive officer of the Springfield Daily Citizen, a nonprofit news organization in Missouri, said working in a newsroom on 9/11 and in the days and weeks that followed was extremely difficult but rewarding.

"There are a few days in your career where you have the opportunity to really rally as a group with everyone understanding what the mission is," Stoeffler said. "From a teamwork standpoint, it's the kind of day that makes you proud to be part of a group that's dedicated to telling the story as honestly and completely as we can."