As I waited for the train to New York in Hartford last week, a man overwhelmed with about five bags asked me where the bathroom was. He was disheveled; a bit disorganized, had a slight accent and left all his bags next to me as he went off to look for the bathroom. In another time and place, there was an unspoken bond — I would watch out for his things. Instead, alarm bells went off. Two words flashed on my internal breaking news ticker: “Unattended Bags.”

I had to check my paranoia though since he had only been gone for minutes, but in a defensive move I’m not exactly proud of, I got up and moved to the other side of the waiting area. I actually headed toward a concrete wall, thinking I might be protected from any explosion.

As I walked away, the traveler came back from the bathroom, and gave me a puzzled look — as if I had broken the silent pact between travelers. Mentally, I shrugged. Another 9/11 casualty.

Every now and then, I’m asked: “Did 9/11 change you?” I rarely answer it head on — part of a conscious decision to not openly talk about 9/11 with many people. For me, many things changed and one of them was this silent pact. No longer do I trust in the simple gestures of strangers. Now, when traveling I almost inevitably ask at some point: “am I in danger here?” Some will dismiss such a perspective and claim I’m a victim of the fear tactics of an administration bent on capitalizing on 9/11. But I don’t think so.

Granted, it’s not a mindset I enjoy. I don’t like thinking of people as suspects. And, it gets worse when I travel with my kids. Then, escape routes enter into my head. If another attack happened in Washington, my wife and I agree that whomever is closer will pick up the kids and drive north to a friend’s place in upstate New York. Even reading that last sentence, I think “when, not if.”

On that day, I was on my way to work at washingtonpost.com’s offices in Arlington, Va., located just outside of Washington, D.C. My wife and I had decided to drive in together, and we were stuck in traffic on Canal Road, one of the feeder routes from Maryland into the D.C. area. We were enjoying the time together on the bright blue day, and listening to the all-news radio station.

When the first plane hit, initial reports said a commuter plane had crashed into one of the towers. For me, it was one of those weird journalistic moments where such a report didn’t feel right and I called one of my producers at washingtonpost.com to see what he knew. For someone who grew up in New York, it didn’t make sense that a commuter place would do that. When the second plane hit, I was minutes away from the office and called my colleague again. He said he had just watched it on television. I will never forget the muted, stunned tone in his voice.

Those touring the 12th floor offices of The Post’s web site are almost always treated to a trip to the balcony, which offers a majestic view of downtown Washington and beyond. On 9/11, we stood there and saw the smoke streaming from the Pentagon. I frantically called my wife and told her to leave and go pick up our kids. At the time, she was a contract attorney working in Rosslyn, just over the bridge from Washington. She worked in a building that housed Defense Department employees and I just wanted her out of there. It didn’t matter. She sat on one of the routes out of Washington for hours as helicopter gunships skimmed over her car, with gunmen peering out the open hatches.

As a journalist, I went into lockdown, taking my emotions and putting them into a corner of my body that I would leave for later. I was the editor of the national and political desks at washingtonpost.com and the columnist that I supervised became the lead writer for the Web site — for that day and all the post-9/11 and anthrax coverage. The next year remains a blur. Luckily, my wife is a former journalist and she understood.

I had two young children at the time, one barely old enough to grasp what was happening. Should I have spent more time with my wife and kids? To this day, I regret not doing that. But, I couldn’t cover the story all day and then come home and actually talk about what happened with them. I’ve talked to very few people about that day and the ensuing year.

So, here I am on the train heading back to Washington, leery of fellow travelers, writing about 9/11 for the first time. And, wondering, can we ever find our way back? Can strangers regain that trust in one another? We now live in a polarized society. Many on both ends of the political spectrum are not interested in genuine debate, which requires an open mind willing to accept opposing points of view.

Major media institutions face their own crises of trust. The notion that citizens can inform themselves from middle-of-the-road, “mainstream” sources is routinely scoffed at. The dominant point of view is that everyone, in every facet of life, comes at an issue from the political right or left.

We need to stop thinking like this. We all need to stop thinking like this.

I think NewAssignment.Net is a huge step in the right direction. And the not-so-secret ingredient in the crust of the pie we are baking is that layer of trust. During my 20 years as a professional reporter and editor, I’ve found that the trust between reporter and editor is built over time, by working in close contact with one another. Jay Rosen’s idea to bring disparate groups together — citizen journalists, bloggers, professional journalists and Net users — is a huge leap of faith because it assumes that trust can emerge among them.

That’s quite a contrast with the bickering and mutual suspicion we’ve seen since bloggers came on the radar screen of the press around 2002. Yet, in bringing these three groups together in a non-profit environment, I and others believe that we can take the best parts of each and do high quality journalism. But it has to be journalism without preconceived notions — political or otherwise.

In this era, “objectivity” is a concept that draws much scorn. I avoid it. For me, fairness and accuracy are better guides to good practice. I believe in letting the story take you where it’s going to take you. I think telling the truth means following it wherever it leads.

I recently left washingtonpost.com after working as an editor there in various capacities over the last 10 years. In 1996, I thought I was on the edge of a revolution and over the next 10 years I tried to push the envelope of Web journalism. Over the past several years, as I’ve become more involved in academic and journalistic organizations, I’ve come to believe that the industry is on the midst of another revolution. At the Media Giraffe Conference at the University of Massachusetts this summer, I heard Jay Rosen and others speak to the desire to do unique, investigative journalism without the pressures inherent within major media organizations. At that point I realized it was time to spread my wings and try something new.

That is where I’m coming from. To be successful, we need to start off by trusting one another, and then build sites where that start can be improved upon. For me, it’s clean slate time. Tabula Rasa, baby. I believe there’s a connection between starting something new and trusting in strangers again. If you want to know where I am coming from, it’s in there.

Steve Fox is a contributing editor of NewAssignment.Net.