When I was city editor at The Ledger in the mid-1980s, a bunch of newsroom staffers routinely climbed an interior ladder to the roof of the newspaper building to watch Space Shuttle launches. We had a clear view of the contrails 85 miles away, especially on a clear day like Jan. 28, 1986.

I was not one of the people watching from the roof when the Challenger launched that day 40 years ago. We had a lot of news to cover, including a cold snap that was threatening the then-vital citrus industry, so I elected to watch the launch on TV while continuing to work.

As soon as it appeared something was amiss, I scrambled up the ladder and looked to the east. I marveled at how long the split contrails that signalled disaster lingered against the azure sky.

Returning to the second-floor newsroom, editors gathered to plan coverage. This was the first time we hadn’t sent any photographers or reporters to a shuttle launch so we had to scramble. (Our photojournalist Pierre DuCharme was at the cape, but he was on assignment for the Associated Press that day.)

Reporters Ronnie Blair and Sherry Robinson were dispatched from our Winter Haven bureau, where they could get to the Space Coast the fastest. They wrote our two main stories that day. An extra five pages were added to the paper for coverage of the disaster.

The Ledger front page
View The Ledger’s Jan. 29, 1986, edition.

The shuttle disaster led to a new creation: the New York Times Group Wire. At the time, The Ledger was owned by The New York Times Co. and the offices for the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group were located in The Ledger building. Jack Harrison, president of the group, insisted that we share our coverage with our sister Florida newspapers in Gainesville and Ocala.

I don’t remember the details, but somehow Michael Maguire, our IT director, concocted an “electronic carbon” system to transfer our text to the sister newspapers and showed editors how to share our stories. That grew into routine sharing of stories and images between NYT regional newspapers and the creation of a feature production center to facilitate group projects.