Looking Back: The Death of Osama bin Laden

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden. At this time last year, my life was completely different, as I was living in Rochester, New York, and working at the Democrat and Chronicle. As Sunday editor at the newspaper (and before that the 1A designer and a page designer), I had designed pages for countless breaking news events. The death of Michael Jackson, the Miracle on the Hudson, a plane crash in Buffalo, New York — I had worked through a lot of big news events.

The night of May 1, 2011, was pretty much like any other Sunday night. We had just enough people working to get the newspaper out, but things were moving smoothly. It was a quiet Sunday night. I had  wrapped up the front page and was checking in on Twitter to see what else was going on. The Associated Press had moved an alert that President Barack Obama would be speaking at roughly 10:30 p.m., so those of us in the newsroom had been speculating what the president would be talking about. Gadhafi maybe? No one really knew.

Then this tweet happened.

So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.
— Keith Urbahn (@keithurbahn) May 2, 2011

Keith Urbahn, a former chief of staff to Donald Rumsfeld, dropped that huge bombshell. The newsroom sprang into action. If this news was true, what was our plan? How were we going to cover it? Could I rip up the front page?

The president's address kept getting pushed back (in retrospect, it was clear they wanted to make sure the president used the exact right words and tone), so the cable news channels had time to speculate and catch up to the news. By the time Obama spoke, we all new what he was going to say: Osama bin Laden was dead.

While waiting for the president to speak, those of us in the Democrat and Chronicle newsroom had developed our coverage plan. By the time Obama came on television, we had just minutes to go until deadline, so the first edition of the newspaper would have to have less coverage. Matt Weinstein, a copy editor at the Democrat and Chronicle, sat glued to one of the newsroom TVs, transcribing the president's words as we knew that the AP wouldn't be fast enough for our deadline. Thanks to Matt's work, we sent our first edition to the presses and moved on to the metro edition.

In a perfect world, I would have loved to been able to tear up the entire front page and do a bold poster-front cover like many newspapers wound up doing. Unfortunately, we didn't have the time or the staff to pull a project like that off. Story jumps would have to be moved, numerous photos would have to be toned — it just wasn't feasible for our newsroom at that point.

We decided to focus on how the Monday newspaper would look on newsstands and in honor boxes. Only what was above the fold would matter. Jeff Blackwell, one of the newspaper's local reporters, pulled together a piece looking at the reaction of families and friends of local soldiers who had died during the War on Terrorism. We had our two stories and large bin Laden photo ready to go. I slowly and carefully typed out the words "BIN LADEN DEAD" in what was probably the biggest type size I had used on a front page. It was a surreal experience. The boogeyman that had haunted America since the beginning of my sophomore year of high school was gone.

It's amazing to think that a full year has passed since this event. It was just luck that I was even designing the front page that night. As Sunday editor, I worked during the day four days a week. Sundays were my only 1A design shift, meaning there was an 85.7 percent chance that a historic news event like this would happen on someone else's shift.

As a kid in high school, I saved all the Sept. 11, 2001, editions of the Democrat and Chronicle. They're still in a box at my parents' house along with newspapers from the 2000 presidential election, the new millennium and the capture of Saddam Hussein. I've said it countless times before, but that won't stop me from writing it here again — I consider myself extremely honored to have been a part of this newspaper. I know that people have this edition saved in their homes. To be even a small part of that is humbling.

For more about designing the Death of Osama bin Laden coverage, check out Bill Kuchman Design.