Once the event was underway, I recall Howard Stern providing rather good up-to-the-minute reporting about the event, by way of guests calling in. While the mainstream news was floundering around with stale info and generally not really knowing what was going on, you could get pretty decent information from the Stern show. Apart the occasional guest callers just calling in and shouting "baba booey," his coverage was quite good. Helps to remember this was way before Twitter, and there was not much "instant live reporting from the commoners" back then. All live news came from mainstream news behemoths.

Tangent but I recall /. being one of the only sites that could withstand the onslaught of people trying to follow the news online.

Which is weird because writing this comment made me go glance at /. and it's sad what it ultimately became.

It did! Once I confirmed it was real I wound up bouncing between the two. Such a surreal experience

This was my experience, too. I learned about it on my commute to work, listing to Howard Stern. And, yeah, at first I thought it was another stupid skit.

One thing that impressed me about Stern's broadcast that day is he kept calling for calm. One quote I'll never forget: "Don't go around beating up cab drivers." Not sure why that made an impact on me.