New York's 9/11: 'The country is in mourning more for jobs than the dead of ten years ago'

I am one of the handful of BBC journalists who have been in New York City for every one of the 9/11 anniversaries. It will always be a hard story for me to assess objectively.

It is the reason that I ended up here, and my most vivid memory of arriving, just six months after 11 September 2001, was the small sign on the Manhattan Bridge as my taxi sped in from JFK, which read simply: "Rise Above." I remember finding some distinctive dust below a friend's air conditioner that we realised, queasily, had come from that day.

I met my wife here, and now have two young children - proud little New Yorkers. Without the destruction of 9/11, I probably would not have come here to live and work. In arriving, I knew that thousands had left the city forever, unable to cope with the memories.

Even your famously cynical and hard-nosed New Yorker often has an unpredictable reaction to the approach of the anniversary. This explains the emotional outpouring last year against the wrongly headlined "Ground Zero mosque". It was left to our sanguine mayor, Mike Bloomberg, to make the rational arguments in favour of a Muslim-run community centre, which is what is really being proposed.

This year, the mosque is almost forgotten and media outlets across all platforms are following their own heavily produced and planned coverage that is trying hard to be distinctive and avoid cliché.

There is a palpable sense that editorial meetings have been full of the executive edict to get tone and balance right. The space between too much and too little coverage is tiny. The websites of all the New York dailies, tabloid and Times alike, have built special memorial sections, often hidden away in the 'local' news tab.

The same is true of most television trailing. Bespoke features on odd and sentimental subjects such as rescue dogs belie the fact that what you will not see or hear anywhere are pieces that graphically reproduce the horror of the day. The falling bodies and the sheer hysteria of conditions on the ground are too much for anyone to bear - beyond the conspiracy theory sites, of which there are many of course.

With Bin Laden dead, and the new World Trade Center tower growing at a floor a week, there is finally some good news to deflect from any mawkishness during the 9/11 build up. On the other hand, the failures of the national economy and railing against the evils of Washington's political class are dwarfing any appetite for emotional overload.

If there's an attempt to brighten the media treatment of this tenth anniversary by concentrating on the future and rebirth of Lower Manhattan, it's tied to a yearning to move away from this period of economic crisis. The country is in mourning more for jobs at the moment than the dead of ten years ago.

I was only eight in 1973 but I wonder how similar the media mood was that November compared to this September. Then, the US was assessing and commemorating the tenth anniversary of Kennedy's assassination - the only comparable event in post-War national memory.

The biggest difference, I suspect, is the extraordinary change to media itself. Where there must have been a sense of unity in tone and purpose behind the monolithic Cronkite-infused commemorations of 1973, we now have an unpredictable, anarchic and atomised media landscape offering a multitude of choice.

The most affecting news event of my generation now has the media that it required. Armed with a smartphone or laptop, the 9/11 news consumer can find any angle they want covered online, and at the same time stumble across plenty of material that goes well beyond the bounds of taste and reason.

The almost surreal act of terror on 9/11 in downtown Manhattan was then the most media-saturated event ever. But, since the invention of Flip cameras, Twitter and Facebook, imagine how much more we would see instantaneously if something comparable were to happen - god forbid - today.

Only on the morning of 11 September itself, as the names are read out on what will hopefully be a clear day, will there be any real sense of the nation coming together through a live television pool. Presidents past and present will be there for the first time in years. Once again there will be no prayers. Leaving out just one faith would exclude and offend too many.

While the ceremony itself follows a well-worn groove, the chances are that, after this symbolically important milestone, the nation will return to normal programming quicker than before. The surprisingly low-key and almost ghettoised media coverage of today's Kennedy moment seems to reflect a desire to really move beyond the national hurt of 9/11, and rise above.

As a freelance, Matt Wells contributes to a range of British media outlets. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Heather, and his two children.