Posted on: Thursday, June 27, 2002

MIXED MEDIA
Atlantic Monthly goes long in covering WTC cleanup

By Peter Johnson
USA Today

The traditional tools reporters use — notebook, pen, tape recorder — would probably have gotten William Langewiesche booted from the ruins of the World Trade Center after Sept. 11.

Reporters weren't particularly welcome there, and if they were allowed, it was for a few hours at a time.

Langewiesche, a professional pilot-turned-award-winning writer for the Atlantic Monthly, doesn't think of himself as a traditional reporter. And he doesn't work like one. "For one thing, I rarely interview people," says Langewiesche, 47. "I talk to them. I listen. I often don't take notes. I'm an immersion guy. It's a very unconventional way to go about reporting, I'm sure."

But in chronicling the massive, nine-month cleanup for the July/August edition of the magazine, his reporting style served him well.

Langewiesche mixed in with fire fighters, police and engineers at the site, shadowing them as they went about the very dangerous process of scoping out dark tunnels and pits among the tons of debris that entombed almost 3,000 people.

He describes it all in a hard-to-put-down, 60,000-word piece that Atlantic editor Michael Kelly says is the longest work of nonfiction that the magazine has ever commissioned.

While many Americans were reeling from the attacks and were highly anxious about the future, Langewiesche immersed himself in a small group of people "completely unheralded on the outside" who handled the task with calm, civility and intelligence.

"I tumbled into this rich mother lode of American culture," says Langewiesche, who practically lived at the site from early morning to late at night, seven days a week. He followed people whom he describes as "this incredible mix of creativity and genius. They are mind-bogglingly good."