I was asked by a PR firm working for CNN to remind y’all that CNN’s website will feature the coverage from 9/11/2001 tomorrow:

Dear Mr. Hunt,

Tomorrow is going to be a rough day — the fifth anniversary
of the attacks of September 11, 2001. As an education writer and observer, you know the value of a “teachable
moment” — and that it must be used properly. Tributes and recollections will appear everywhere, filtered through the
eyes of analysts, journalists, bloggers, politicians and every other American
with access to a podium – in print, on a street corner, on the air or
online. But five years can muddy
recollections – and for many students, five years ago is an eternity.

There is a great resource available for free that can
help. CNN Pipeline – CNN.com’s premium
video news service — will replay, without charge, CNN’s coverage from that day
precisely as happened five years ago, beginning at 8:30 a.m. (ET), minutes
before the first news reports of a plane hitting the World Trade Center in New
York City.

CNN Pipeline is comprised of four separate feeds. Through them the rebroadcast will supplement
its coverage with live reports from memorial services in New York City,
Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

One more thing: To be sensitive to those online users who do
not wish to see the replay, CNN Pipeline requires those who want to see the
footage to click on Pipe 4 to launch the program.

The people who frequent Bud the Teacher care about
education and are tech-savvy and culturally aware. They’ll appreciate knowing that this opportunity exists. On behalf of CNN, we hope you’ll tell them.

     I’m getting more and more of these press release-type e-mails, although I don’t usually respond to them.  (Maybe that’s a session for a future conference — Blogger as PR Target: Responding to the Corporate Press Machine.)  This one, though, is likely worth passing on.  I was glued to CNN for a few weeks during/after 9/11.  It was a pretty scary time.  And, yes, I know that’s a pretty United Statesian-centric worldview.  But it was.  Scary. 

    I probably won’t be using this tool in my classroom — I wasn’t planning a very long remembrance.  Our school-wide daily writing prompt tomorrow is "Remember."  It’s open ended because I know that some students won’t want to think about 9/11 — and I’m not sure it’s my place to force them to.  Then again, it might be, but that’s a post for another day.   

    I will check in with the coverage with my journalism students — but that’s all.   I’m not sure that I like the idea that this footage is being reused, in part, as a promotional tool for a new web-based news service.  I do, agree, though, that seeing the original footage has some educational value.