It was a month when there was only one story. As word came through on September 11th that a story was breaking in New York, the sound on television sets was turned up in newsrooms all over the State and journalists stood in horror. News conferences and morning schedules were scrapped as the unfolding pictures confirmed that news for the coming weeks would focus, almost exclusively, on the attacks that shook the world.

But while newspaper journalists could soak up the dramatic pictures, broadcasters had to get straight to work. RT╔ Radio 1's Liveline was the only national current affairs-style programme on the Irish airwaves at the time and staff on the programme found themselves frantically trying to come to terms with what was happening and respond to it.

Presenter Joe Duffy had a television set in his studio and was able to see the events as they happened while on air. "I just kept talking. I had Niall O'Dowd (editor of the New York-based Irish Voice newspaper) on the line and we did the best we could, but it was becoming obvious this was just catastrophic," he says.

Although O'Dowd was able to relay what was going on, the event was a moment for television. "When the second plane hit the tower and I realised this was no accident, I was conscious that people would turn on their televisions," says Duffy.

RT╔ television and TV3 cut their planned schedule, ushered news presenters into studios and began to broadcast live using pictures from CNN, Sky News and other news channels.

Grainne Seoige of TV3 and Anthony Murnane of RT╔ had the unenviable task of trying to explain to viewers what was happening in New York as the twin towers collapsed and it became obvious that many people had died.

Conor O'Clery, International Business Editor of The Irish Times, was one of the few Irish journalists in New York at the time. He was also one of the few journalists to witness planes crash into the twin towers, then see them collapse, viewing the disaster from his office in an adjacent building.

After seeing an explosion at the first tower, O'Clery rang the RT╔ newsroom and did a live interview on the 2FM news at 2 p.m. Irish time. He then ran down to the World Trade Centre, where he saw police officers moving people away from the area and so returned to his office to view events.

O'Clery did live interviews throughout the day for every national Irish broadcasting service, including RT╔, TV3 and Today FM.

Witnessing the destruction of buildings he often visited for work or social reasons, O'Clery was nonetheless forced to be professional and carry out his work as a journalist. "It was a way of coping with the emotional impact," he says.

"Looking back on the day, I have a sense that I didn't and couldn't accurately describe what happened. There is an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy," he says.

Perhaps the most frustrating element for many news outlets was not having a news reporter in New York and not being able to send one out. Margaret Ward, RT╔ foreign editor, decided to send Jim Fahy and Charlie Bird - the latter was in Bogota, Colombia - to the scene. But flights were cancelled to the US and Fahy was camped out in a London airport for three days until he could fly to Montreal, Canada, while Bird trekked through Mexico City airport to get as far as Miami. When the correspondents did finally reach New York, the story had not out-run itself, said Donal Byrne, news editor in RT╔. "There was a huge news element at that stage involving Irish priests and the voluntary services. There was a regional angle but not a parochial angle," he says.

The Irish Independent newspaper had problems getting reporter Martina Devlin out to New York from Dublin and it was Saturday before she could get a flight. "We had various wire services looking at different angles of the story, but we would have preferred to have some of our own staff there," says news editor Philip Molloy. For newspapers - which had to follow events hours after pictures had been repeatedly shown on television - the key was to go big on images, increase the number of pages and keep non-US stories to a minimum. There was no shortage of staff for the extra workload as people who were not working on the day rang in to offer their services.

"I haven't had people ring up to get involved in a story for a while. We had freelancers, staff on days off and columnist ringing up to offer their services," said Molloy.

In the days that followed, as the impact of the event sank in, stories with a human dimension emerged and filled newspapers and airwaves. The Star changed its emphasis from that employed by its sister newspaper, the British Daily Star, which focused on the possibility of British troops going to war, in favour of stories of Irish firemen and policemen involved in the rescue operation in New York, says news editor Dave O'Connell.

"There will continue to be stories from New York for some time as people are pulled out from the rubble and memorial services take place," he says.

For a programme such as Today FM's The Last Word, the task on the day of the attacks - and in the days succceeding - was to contextualise the events with interviews from journalists and commentators such as Robert Fisk, Fintan O'Toole and Noam Chomsky, says senior producer Stephen Price. The focus on the attacks by news outlets in the days after the event was inevitable, he says. "Even three or four days afterwards, I couldn't take my eyes off the way the twin towers absorbed those planes."