2026 Edition of “September Twelfth” Details How The Wall Street Journal Still Published After the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

Reporters and Editors Reflect 25 Years Later on the Lessons the Paper’s Response Teaches About Leadership, Trust, and Resilience

DENVER, CO, UNITED STATES, September 8, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a newly expanded edition of September Twelfth: An American Comeback Story returns readers to one of the most remarkable episodes in modern journalism — and explores what the response has to teach businesses, institutions, and individuals today.

Written by veteran journalist Dean Rotbart, the 2026 edition recounts how The Wall Street Journal produced its Pulitzer Prize-winning September 12 newspaper after fallout from the collapse of the World Trade Center left its main newsroom unusable, scattered reporters and editors across New York and New Jersey, and severed normal lines of communication.

September Twelfth follows the men and women who found themselves working through a catastrophe on a scale no one could have imagined. Cut off from their newsroom and often from one another, they relied on experience, judgment, and a shared determination to get the next day’s paper published.
As Rotbart writes in the new edition: “Buildings can disappear. Character remains.”

That determination showed in what happened next. Reporters gathered facts from the streets. Editors improvised workspaces in apartments and at a backup facility in South Brunswick, New Jersey. Technologists activated crucial production systems. Others saw what needed to be done and did it. “No paper at all was unthinkable,” recalled Jesse Lewis, then the Journal’s global copy chief.

The 25th Anniversary Edition preserves the complete award-winning 2021 narrative while adding more than 70 pages of fresh content that deepens the story and extends its lessons.

Gerald F. Seib, the Journal’s former executive Washington editor, contributes a new foreword reflecting on 9/11 and its lasting consequences. More than a dozen current and former Journal reporters and editors also look back after a quarter century, recalling the unity that followed the attacks, the professional culture that enabled them to act without waiting for instructions, and the profound changes that have reshaped the news business.

The new edition also includes a biographical portrait of Paul E. Steiger, the Journal’s legendary managing editor, examining the experiences that helped prepare him to lead under extraordinary pressure. The 2026 epilogue traces what happened to many of the journalists whose experiences form the heart of the book.

The Journal’s response was not something its staff invented on the morning of 9/11. It grew out of years of hiring good people, training them well, setting high standards, and giving them room to use their own judgment.

The lessons are not limited to journalism. Executives, entrepreneurs, educators, and others responsible for leading people through uncertainty will find much in the paper’s experience that applies to their own organizations.

The original edition drew strong reviews. Kirkus Reviews called it “a remarkable testament” to the Journal staff, while Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Review praised its depiction of journalistic ethics in action. The Poynter Institute called it the most detailed and dramatic account yet of the Journal’s Pulitzer-winning work following the attacks.

September Twelfth is subtitled “An American Comeback Story.” The book captures the idea that the story did not end when the towers fell. What happened the next day—and what made it possible—merits a place in the history of 9/11.

The 25th Anniversary Edition is available now for $24.95 on Amazon at tinyurl.com/NineEleven25.

DEAN ROTBART
TJFR Press
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