Interview with Kathleen McNulty

Newsroom Chaos on Sept. 11, 2001

Professor and Poughkeepsie Journal editor Kathleen McNulty of SUNY New

Paltz interviewed with her Journalism 1 class on September 14th, recalling her experience

of 9/11 and the impact of the days following.

On that Tuesday morning, Kathleen McNulty walked into her newsroom along

with her co-workers to start the day. She had just come back from a vacation and was

going to read through a few emails. “By nine, all hell had broken loose.”

After the first tower fell, the morning became chaotic. “Everyone was in shock. ‘It

must be terrorism’ one person said. Immediately people were frightened. Were we under

attack?” said McNulty on her experience.

Since the towers were down, cell phone communication also came to a halt.

“People started calling us for information. There was no way to get information in the

middle of a story that’s still happening. We didn’t know if there would be an end to these

attacks,” McNulty said.

Not only was the public afraid, but the newsroom was also trying to handle the

situation emotionally. McNulty said, “It was hard to keep the emotions out. People were

watching the TV, trying to get news, interviewing, then running down to the patio outside

of our building to cry and have a smoke, and then running back up to the news room. A

friend of mine, a tough cookie, would run down stairs and cry for 10 minutes and the

come back up to the newsroom.”

When McNulty interviewed 9/11 survivor and young father at the time of the attack, Tom

Canavan, she could sense the strain and depression that would hit him after the event.

One year later, she went back to interview him and found he had been suffering from

severe PTSD and been put on different medications. “He was very, very traumatized.”

The effects also hurt Poughkeepsie Mayor Colette Lafuente, who came by the newsroom

the day after the towers were attacked, asking if the Poughkeepsie Journal would run her

missing husband’s photographs in hopes to find him after he didn’t come home from the

city on the night of September 11th. McNulty recalls Mayor Lafuente’s situation: “It

turned out after much investigation, he worked at a bank but had a flyer on his desk for a

bank trade breakfasts in the World Trade Center that morning. It took her years to have

him declared dead because hundreds of people couldn’t find their families DNA. It is

horrible to have to live with that.”

McNulty admits it is still hard for her to travel into Manhattan. “It was not the New York

you were used to. It didn’t seem like the same place. You never felt it would feel the

same ever again…no one could tell you that you were safe.”