Lecture: Diane Cardwell
Diane Cardwell.
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New York Times City Hall Bureau Chief Diane Cardwell seemed a little nervous when she first started speaking to a room of students and faculty from NYU’s Department of Journalism on September 26. “I feel a tiny bit awkward being in this position today,” she said. “You know, as journalism students, you’re already a couple of steps ahead of me because you’ve decided you want to do this.”
Cardwell didn’t consciously set out to become a journalist. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I had an idea: I wanted to travel the world,” Cardwell said. Fresh out of college, having graduated from Harvard with a degree in American History, Cardwell said, “I thought I could finance that trip by writing for magazines.” In the end, things didn’t work quite the way she had envisioned. “I didn’t ever get to take that trip,” she said, “but I like to think I had a great adventure anyways.”
Instead of taking that train from Nice to Istanbul as she’d planned, Cardwell took a different kind of trip. With virtually no experience in journalism, she landed a gig as an editorial assistant at the now defunct current events magazine, Seven Days, in her hometown of New York City. “We used to joke about the name saying that it was called Seven Days because that how many days we worked,” she said. Working closely with the professionals at Seven Days taught Cardwell how to edit. “Rather than a Devil Wears Prada experience of fetching coffee, I was actually doing edits with writers, getting assignments, and getting to see them on the cover of a magazine,” she said.
Almost two decades of experience as a journalist has turned Cardwell into a seasoned veteran. Cardwell encouraged the students in the audience to be inquisitive and look past the surface of a story to discover what’s really there. “You have to ask for what you want,” she said. Then she shared her mantra: “You may not get exactly what you asked for but you certainly won’t get it if you don’t”. When interviewing the mother of a murdered teen, do you dance around important questions for fear of intruding upon her grief? Or do you go in and ask for the facts, regardless of the emotional cost to your subject, she asked? There is a middle ground, according to Cardwell. You can be respectful without missing out on pertinent information. Cardwell advised students to intersperse the hard questions with softer ones: What did he like to do in his free time? Did he have any rivals? Do you think this might have been a factor in his death?
Cardwell made many connections during the two years she worked at Seven Days. Her reputation as a diligent worker along with this network of co-workers and friends helped her land an editorial job at The New York Times Magazine. After five years as a Times editor, Cardwell’s desire to look beyond the surface prompted her to change directions. “One day, I was on the phone in my dingy little cubicle, arguing with Sharon Stone’s publicist, saying that even though some magazines would allow her to approve quotes, we wouldn’t,” Cardwell recounted. It was then that she realized that she was tired of answering to the whims of pampered celebrities and wanted to write about more trenchant issues.
Following her mantra, Cardwell asked for what she wanted: a position on the Times Metro desk. In 1996 she got it.
Cardwell says that she has an eye for stories that show the impact of government policies on the everyday lives of New Yorkers. She often augments an initial story with follow-up articles. Cardwell has written several pieces on Mayor Bloomberg’s poverty and homelessness initiatives, covering the legislative process in City Hall, and then following the subsequent ripples outward to the homeless communities living under bridges and in abandoned tunnels. In her July 18, 2006 article, “Homeless in City Face New Effort to Clear Streets,” Cardwell writes about the individuals who meet City Hall’s definition of “homelessness,” putting faces and voices to that label.
In 2006, Cardwell’s insight into city politics and her genuine concern for the citizens of New York City earned her a promotion to City Hall Bureau Chief. Cardwell said she still isn’t sure where she wants to take the bureau, but her curious and empathetic influence will surely be felt. The City Hall bureau would benefit from turning away from the internal battles among politicians and focusing more closely on what happening on the city’s streets, according to Cardwell. She would like to explore the effect policies have on the people and communities of the five boroughs.
As the lecture drew to a close, Cardwell offered the crowd of aspiring journalists some advice. If you find an assignment less than appetizing, try looking at it from a new angle, she said. But, Cardwell admitted, she takes a defensive stance on stories that don’t stir her interest. She occupies herself with the stories she wants to write, making her less available to write the ones she doesn’t. Of course, if that approach doesn’t work and you find yourself saddled with dull assignment, “rent is a really good motivator,” Cardwell pointed out, to the amusement of the crowd.