Our front and back pages of 9/11/02 were a team effort. We were looking for a way to be both reverent and bold. We wanted a presentation that could both whisper and shout.

The idea to honor the victims of the attacks by using their photos was conceived by Geri Migielicz, director of photography, and seen to fruition by Kevin Wendt, news design director. The gallery idea recalls the poignant images from World War II that ran in Time magazine, and we found its power ourselves when we ran the photos of the hijackers from 9/11 .

The research and permission to use victims' photos was an undertaking that started in early August. We were not granted the rights to use all the photos, which is why there are 905 images; more were not available to us. We used all that we had.

The concept took many tweaks and turns along the way, from a reconception of the cover by Matt Mansfield, AME/Visuals, that would offer a "voice of the paper" starting essay as a quieter approach than our initial iteration, to a Herculean undertaking by copy editor Josh Susong to match names with images so readers could have context for the gallery.

And, perhaps amazingly, there was no resistance from top editors to the approach. In fact, they encouraged it.