The Kennedy Assassination: The Reporters’ Story : CJR
Dallas: November 22, 1963. It’s a dateline that needs little introduction. But for reporters on the scene for President Kennedy’s swing through Texas, the day seemed likely to be like many others on the road. Tom Wicker, a writer for The New York Times, hadn’t brought his notebook; it would be the least of his problems as he and dozens of other reporters scrambled to confirm that Kennedy had, first, been shot, and second, in fact killed. CJR’s Winter 1964 issue created a moving, detailed history by collecting the words of journalists, the traveling press secretary, and contemporary publications to show how news of the assassination was gathered and then, at great difficulty, relayed back to the East Coast. It also shows journalists struggling, and not always succeeding, to keep their emotions from getting in the way of their work. The below paragraph ran above the original piece.
On these pages the Review reproduces the words of men who were in the Presidential party in Dallas on November 22. The words are offered in a connected narrative as a case study in the reflexes and conscious actions of professional journalists under the heaviest kind of pressure and emotional stress. Several of these narratives have been widely distributed, but they have not been previously collated. They emphasize again how little there was for reporters to see and how much, after the first phases, they depended on each other to complete their information.