New York ? In the studio at WNEW-FM In the studio, Vin Scelsa had just started playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland,” a swirling drama that ends with a shooting and an ambulance in the night, when The Associated Press teletype spat out a one-sentence bulletin.

“Man identified as John Lennon shot outside the Dakota Hotel,” it said.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” says Scelsa. “But by the time ‘Jungleland’ was over, 10 minutes later, AP had sent another bulletin saying John Lennon was dead.

“I still didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to say it on the air. I told Marty Martinez, my assistant, that I wasn’t going to report it until it was confirmed, like, six ways.

“Finally I had to.”

It was 25 years ago today that John Lennon, one of the best-known and most-loved musicians of the 20th century, was murdered outside the Dakota, where he lived with his wife, Yoko Ono, and their son, Sean.

The killer was a disturbed man who wanted a piece of Lennon’s fame.

Lennon, who had just turned 40, died late on an unseasonably warm Monday night. By dawn on Tuesday, much of the city felt as if an anvil had been dropped on its head.

With the exception of Sept. 11, it’s arguable that no trauma of modern times sent a bigger chill across the city than the murder of Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980.

“People took it hard,” says Joe Raiola, a Mad magazine editor whose informal annual musical tribute to Lennon has grown into a two-night event at Lincoln Center. “Beyond the terrible personal loss of John, they couldn’t imagine their creative world without him.”

“It darkened everything with a silence left by the hole his murder created,” says Meg Griffin, a deejay on WPIX-FM then and on Sirius Satellite Radio now.

Dr. Joy Browne, a psychologist on WOR-AM, says Lennon was the kind of public figure whose death people felt personally.

“When someone is bigger than life, like John Lennon or Elvis Presley, we expect they will also have more of the things we all want,” Browne says, “and one of those things is to live a long time. When that doesn’t happen, we all feel more vulnerable.”

If maintaining a high media profile a quarter-century after one’s death is a sign of impact, there can’t be much argument in Lennon’s case.

The Actors Theatre Workshop, Raiola’s project, has live shows at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Lincoln Center’s Clarke Studio Theater, headlined by Harry Chapin’s daughter, Jen.

Today there will be the annual vigil at Strawberry Fields, the Lennon space in Central Park across from the Dakota near 72nd Street and Central Park West.

Several radio stations will feature Lennon music all day today. All-news radio WCBS-AM will replay some of its coverage from Dec. 8, 1980.

A tribute show called “Strawberry Fields Forever” will play Saturday at B.B. King’s on 42nd Street.

Three new Lennon books have just been published: “Lennon Revealed” by his longtime friend Larry Kane, “Memories of John Lennon,” a compilation edited by Ono, and “John Lennon: The New York Years” by his photographer friend Bob Gruen.

Lennon also is featured in a sweeping new Beatles biography by Bob Spitz, and his solo music was showcased earlier this year in a short-lived Broadway musical show, “Lennon.”

Filmmakers Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger are preparing a film that tells the stories of several fans in New York on the night Lennon died, with WNEW-FM’s radio coverage as a background theme.

“Lennon’s death may not have touched literally everybody,” Scelsa says. “But it touched a huge part of the city. Everyone who grew up with the Beatles and his music. Every baby boomer. This was the first time, for many, that they had to face their own mortality.”