New edition of September Twelfth revisits the Wall Street Journal’s 9/11 newsroom response

A 25th-anniversary edition of Dean Rotbart’s September Twelfth: An American Comeback Story expands the account of how The Wall Street Journal published its September 12, 2001 paper after the World Trade Center attacks. The new version adds fresh reporting, new reflections from Journal journalists, and lessons on leadership and resilience for readers beyond journalism.

Why it matters: - The Wall Street Journal’s response after 9/11 remains a case study in leadership under pressure, showing how trained teams can keep operating when normal systems collapse. - The book’s lessons extend beyond journalism to executives, educators, entrepreneurs and others responsible for guiding people through uncertainty. - The 25th-anniversary edition arrives as institutions still look for examples of resilience, trust and decision-making during crisis.

What happened: - Veteran journalist Dean Rotbart released a newly expanded 2026 edition of September Twelfth: An American Comeback Story. - The book revisits how The Wall Street Journal produced its Pulitzer Prize-winning September 12 newspaper after the collapse of the World Trade Center made its main newsroom unusable. - The attacks scattered reporters and editors across New York and New Jersey and cut off normal communication lines. - The Journal’s staff still got the paper out the next day. - Rotbart’s new edition is available now on Amazon for $24.95 at More information.

The details: - Reporters gathered facts from the streets after the attacks. - Editors improvised workspaces in apartments and at a backup facility in South Brunswick, New Jersey. - Technologists activated key production systems to keep publication moving. - Jesse Lewis, then the Journal’s global copy chief, said, “No paper at all was unthinkable.” - The 25th Anniversary Edition preserves the complete award-winning 2021 narrative. - The new edition adds more than 70 pages of fresh content. - Gerald F. Seib, the Journal’s former executive Washington editor, wrote a new foreword. - More than a dozen current and former Journal reporters and editors reflect on the attacks, the unity that followed, and the changes that have reshaped the news business. - The book also includes a biographical portrait of Paul E. Steiger, the Journal’s former managing editor. - The 2026 epilogue follows what happened to many of the journalists featured in the book. - The original edition drew praise from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Review and the Poynter Institute.

Between the lines: - The book argues that the Journal’s response was not improvisation alone; it grew from years of hiring well, training hard, setting high standards and giving staff room to use judgment. - That framing turns the story into more than a newspaper history. It becomes a management lesson about preparing organizations for moments when plans fail. - The subtitle, “An American Comeback Story,” signals the book’s broader point that the story continued after the towers fell.

What's next: - The 25th-anniversary edition is now on sale, and the new reflections may draw fresh attention from readers interested in 9/11 history, newsroom leadership and crisis management. - The book is positioned to keep the Journal’s post-attack response in the public conversation as the 25-year mark prompts new retrospectives.

The bottom line: - September Twelfth uses one newspaper’s 9/11 experience to argue that preparation, trust and character matter most when a crisis destroys the usual way of working.