Kate Forgach Story
As the Online Editor at the Fort Collins Coloradoan on 9/11, I well remember our publisher greeting me at the office door with the news of a plane striking the first tower.
I raced into the online office and worked like fury with our tech people to entirely remake the landing page of our website. We knew many people stuck in offices would have no access to TV reports and I suspected major news websites would crash under the intensive overload, so our team worked to provide full coverage of the ever-changing story, as well as a multi-media presentation of the timeline. Our traffic that week went from 120,000 hits to 1.2 million hits. I remember typing furiously at the copy desk when I suddenly felt a wave of emotion flow over me. A moment later, the TV above our desks showed the second plane plowing into the second tower.
I will never forget the emotions of that day and how the entire news team pulled together to provide full coverage for those hungry to understand what was happening. Every day after work that week, I found myself crying behind my steering and noticed others similarly struck. It was just so very hard to comprehend what had happened in the blink of an eye.