The L.A. New Times was one of the few weekly publications around that did not drop everything it was preparing on Sept. 11 to make way for coverage of the attacks in New York and Washington D.C. The New Times has an earlier deadline than many weeklies but, more importantly, editor Rick Barrs said, “We just figured, ‘What can we say that wasn’t going to be said?'” To a certain degree that makes sense, although it was a contrarian view. Most newspapers, regardless of their coverage area, rushed to get something into print. Some did better than others. In the first few hours of Sept. 11, I felt the same way Barrs did. It was not clear to me just how significant events were, after years of seeing one news story sweep into our consciousness only to be quickly replaced by another. I wondered how much it would mean six days later, when most of you would receive the next issue of our paper. Naturally, we did drop our original plans for the last issue and moved on to other things once reality began to sink in. But I wonder now if it makes any difference? The truth is that business and business journalism, in three quick weeks, has changed drastically and I’m still not sure any of us – neither those of us who report the news nor those of us who read it – really understand that. A few weeks ago it was enough for us to write about plans for a big box store to move into Fallbrook Mall or to empathize with those who might have bought shares of Homestore.com or NetZero at the top of the market. In this space, I was often lured into writing some version of the things-look-grim-now-but-wait-’til-the-first-quarter-of-next-year! pep talk. All of that seems a little foolish now. Indeed, life goes on, and I hope that is reflected in our pages. This week, for instance, along with a package of stories about the impact the attack is having on the local travel industry you will find one about plans for AMC Entertainment to build a new 16-screen theater in Burbank. There is a story about how an Encino-based company that finances major infrastructure projects in emerging countries expects the way it does business to be changed forever, but there is also a story about a fellow who has made a career out of selling surplus film stock in Hollywood. And as the weeks go by, I expect you will see more stories from us about the immediate local impact of the attacks, their repercussions and whatever form a war to combat terrorism takes. But what about after that? Given that more than 6,000 people died in one morning in an attack on the United States, how important, for instance, is it if people who live in Tarzana or Arleta wind up citizens of Los Angeles or some other city? There is an impulse to make sure we keep things in perspective. And there is the impulse to make a concerted effort to return to something we call normal life. These days, the two don’t necessarily coincide. So what will papers like the San Fernando Valley Business Journal write about in the months to come? I think there is probably a short-term answer for that, and a very different long-term one. In the short term, the news will be bad. In past weeks, you have read here and elsewhere that the two pillars propping up the economy were residential real estate and consumer spending. Both of those have taken a nosedive in the past couple of weeks. (And why shouldn’t they? Despite the misguided attempts by political leaders to make us believe that spending money now is a form of patriotism, a shopping spree in this atmosphere feels as wrong as using your Visa card to buy groceries does.) Real people will lose their jobs. Companies will restate their earnings projections downward. Projects and business plans in the works will be halted. In the long term, the news will be good – but different. My guess is everything that has been “fun” about the business world will be over for a while. In the last 20 or so years, stories about individuals who had ideas, worked hard to put them into action and then profited enormously as a result have become part of a new folklore. So have the cautionary tales of individuals who got too far ahead of themselves and ended up in inglorious heaps. We will have new stories to tell, new myths to cling to. If it is true (and this is not a foregone conclusion) that we are, as a nation, preparing to go to war with somebody in a way we have not since World War II, a time before some of us were even alive, many of the things we have cared about will no longer matter. My whole life, it seems, my parents have told me about what life was like during World War II. Boys (always boys) went off to war. Girls and families stayed at home and collected scrap metal for the war effort, ate rationed meat, worked in defense plants, put off plans they had “before” with confidence they would resume “after” the war. They describe those as “great times,” but much different from the “great times” we have had more recently. If that experience really is any indication of what is ahead, business in the next few years will focus less on individual accomplishments and more on collective contributions to a national goal – something that does not sound all that farfetched to those of a certain age. But it is a foreign concept to those of us who have lived and worked in the so-called New Economy most of our lives, so foreign it is hard to believe it’s all really happening. Michael Hart is editor of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].