Covering a crisis like last week's blackout in New York is a special challenge for newsmen--particularly when they themselves are affected by the emergency. When the lights went off and the elevators stopped moving at 9:34 Wednesday night, a few staff members were still in the Time-Life Building in midtown Manhattan. Some stayed on through the night, finishing stories by emergency lighting; others walked down as many as 26 flights of stairs to the dark, crowded street below. Among those in the building was New York Bureau Chief Laurence Barrett, who immediately began phoning correspondents to deploy them around the city: John Tompkins to the power company's headquarters, James Willwerth to city hall. Other staffers caught by the blackout at home, in restaurants and in theaters also began to interview people and record events. "Everyone had a very individual response," says Correspondent Eileen Shields, who covered police headquarters that night. "I was walking up the stairs to my apartment when the lights went out. I thought I was going to be mugged. Then I realized it was happening to everyone."

As crime swelled in some neighborhoods, our correspondents and photographers moved in to follow the battle between police and looters. Observed Correspondent Mary Cronin: "There was a carnival atmosphere. Downtown they were getting drunk and directing traffic. Uptown they were getting drunk and shopping without money." Said Reporter-Researcher Paul Witteman, who covered the bloody scene in Brooklyn: "It was a tragedy in one act."

To write their reports, the correspondents returned on Thursday to the officially closed, eerily deserted Time-Life Building, where a skeleton staff was working without air conditioning or normal lighting. An emergency generator installed after the '65 blackout was used to run one elevator and the telex machines. Among those on hand were Associate Editor Frank Merrick, who wrote our cover story, and Associate Editor Frederic Golden, who wrote an accompanying article on why it all happened. The senior editors for the whole project were Marshall Loeb and Ronald Kriss. Says Kriss, who wrote our cover stories on the '64 Harlem riots and the '65 blackout: "The '65 blackout was a lark. This one was more like the '64 riots--a disaster."

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