Bye, dear readers
Memories of exciting 25 yrs. covering Albany
ALBANY — This Monday marks the seventh anniversary of this column — and its last day. After 30 years as a reporter — and seven straight years of never missing a single Monday with the column—I am leaving the Daily News and the journalism business.
Much has changed in state government — and the journalism industry — since I started covering the Capitol a quarter century ago, including the last nearly 11 years as Albany bureau chief for The News, a paper I grew up reading.
It’s easy to reflect on the craziness.
Eliot Spitzer, after getting caught up in a high-priced call girl scandal, in 2008, became the first governor to leave office in scandal since William Sulzer in 1913.
There were a stream of criminal corruption convictions involving the most powerful legislative leaders in state government, a host of rank-and-file legislators, and top associates to Gov. Cuomo.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman abruptly resigned in 2018 just hours after it was publicly revealed he physically abused four women he dated.
And former state Controller Alan Hevesi was sent to prison for his role in a massive state pension fund pay-toplay scandal that I helped uncover.
There’s also been a nauseating amount of sexual abuse and harassment scandals that only now finally seem to be taken seriously by state officials.
A glaring example of the mind-set of some lawmakers came a few years ago when I lost a lot of weight and a state senator told me he and some of his colleagues believed “it’s because you have someone on the side.”
“That says a lot more about you, Senator, then it says about me,” I responded.
And that’s absolutely nothing compared to what so many mostly female staffers, interns and even lobbyists have had to endure from lecherous powerful men just to do their jobs.
There was a 2009 leadership coup in the state Senate that shut down the chamber for a month, and at one point led to the bizarre scene of stalemated Democrats and Republicans holding their own sessions at the exact same time in the same chamber.
And there was the time last year I was arrested for the high crime of using my cell phone in an empty Senate lobby and then not leaving.
Access to the governor and legislative leaders has been severely curtailed over the years, and it has grown increasingly more difficult to get public information.
But there was also positive history.
David Paterson in 2008 became the state’s first black — and blind — governor after he ascended from lieutenant governor to the top spot when Spitzer abruptly resigned.
Current Senate Majority Leader Andrea StewartCousins is the first woman to head a state legislative chamber in New York. And she, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and new Attorney General Letitia James are the first African-Americans to hold their respective positions.
Meanwhile, the media industry I always wanted to be a part of has changed dramatically over the decades. When I started in 1988 at the Watertown Daily Times, there were no cell phones, laptops or social media. Print newspapers were the dominant news medium.
But now, the emergence of Twitter, online news sites and the 24-hour news cycle has dramatically altered the industry. Print no longer carries the same influence. And as many news organizations struggle to make due with fewer resources, at least seven papers in recent years closed their state Capitol bureaus— while many more have reduced the size of theirs — meaning tailored local coverage has thinned dramatically.
Still, one can’t do what I’ve been fortunate to do for so long without holding out hope that what we cover makes a difference.
The aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the 2000 presidential recount in Florida are two of the most important stories I covered during my career.
But it’s two Albany moments I’ve been thinking most about lately as I prepare to end my journalism career.
Months after New York in 2011 legalized same-sex marriage, I encountered a group of well-dressed people in a Capitol elevator. They told me they were from Wisconsin, but were in Albany to get married. When I asked why in Albany, one said, “Because we can’t get married in our state.”
That moment really hit home how important that law was to so many people both in and out of New York.
More recently, after years of writing about the fight to make it easier for survivors of child sex abuse to seek justice as adults, the law known as the Child Victims Act finally passed in January.
Before and after the vote, survivor after survivor came up to me, some with tears, thanking The News for its aggressive coverage on the issue.
Stories like those serve as reminders that what we do as reporters still matters.
And that is what I will miss most of all.