A Founder Returns
By Sarah Lynch
When you’re interviewing the Governor during a global pandemic, you get one question. Surrounded by your fiercest competitors on a once-in-a-lifetime story, the responsibility of that question weighs heavy. And when Andrew Cuomo finally picks on your raised hand, the pressure is on.
For Bernadette Hogan, her singular question from a press conference on April 20, 2020 stands out:
“If you test positive for the virus, are you allowed to be admitted or readmitted to a nursing home?”
From then on, the reporters posed nursing home questions almost daily at the Governor’s press briefings. As the Albany correspondent for the New York Post, Bernadette attended nearly every briefing, which occurred for 111 consecutive days and continues now. Her days quickly became consumed in a mad dash to chase stories and sources, attempting to provide concrete answers in the midst of vast uncertainty.
Bernadette followed leads on New York’s nursing home story with unceasing diligence, and on February 11, Bernadette’s byline appeared on a breakthrough story: Cuomo’s top aide admitted that they withheld the true total of COVID-19 nursing home deaths, fearing repercussions from federal prosecutors. Families sounded the alarm, and Bernadette was on the story.
“Covering Albany is being present. It's fast-paced. You have to be able to move with a moment’s notice,” Bernadette says. “The job is very demanding and super competitive. A lot of times news will break and my boss will say ‘I need that up ASAP.’ And ASAP means yesterday.”
When you join the Marist Circle, it’s only a matter of time before you hear the name Bernadette Hogan. The 2017 graduate’s time as Editor-in-Chief heralded a new era for the student-run paper, launching a unique initiative called For the Record.
Four years later, Bernadette returns to the project as an honoree.
Goodman Lepota, a 2018 Marist graduate, pitched For the Record for three years, and no one took it on until Bernadette became Editor-in-Chief. “Bernadette Hogan was pivotal in the launch of the first For The Record,” Lepota shares. The semester after Bernadette graduated, the Marist Circle revived its print and digital publication. “I would argue that our collaboration including Tara Guaimano and Ken Huang at Marist Circle saved the student newspaper because we launched maristftr.com, maristcircle.com, and the print newspaper. We carried the newspaper into the digital era,” Lepota says.
Illustration by Eva Wenrich
When Bernadette arrived at the Payne Mansion for the For the Record photoshoot, the balance in her temperament became immediately evident. She was unfailingly gracious and patient as we moved her around the outside of the early 20th-century mansion. Meanwhile, her phone never ceased buzzing. Bernadette simultaneously fielded phone calls and committed to every aspect of the shoot with ease. She’s constantly on –– in Albany, that’s the only way to survive.
“The benefit of this beat is it’s always changing. It’s never stagnant, and there’s always areas to improve,” Bernadette says.
Back when Bernadette was looking at colleges, a strong liberal arts program was a must-have. The more you learn about Bernadette’s diverse interests, the more this checks out. She double-majored in philosophy and English with a concentration in writing and minored in Spanish and theatre at Marist. Her mother is an actress, and Bernadette herself has dabbled in playwriting.
But you cannot know Bernadette without knowing her passion for horses. Living in New York City until she was nine years old, she took horseback lessons at the Claremont Riding Academy and rode horses around Central Park.“I told my mom that I was a country girl and I should not be raised in the city, because obviously I was domineering as a nine-year-old and thought I was 90 by the time I was three,” Bernadette recalls.
Her love for horseback riding flourished when her family moved to New Jersey. On the day I met Bernadette for the photoshoot, she was traveling later that afternoon to meet her old riding instructor, Clare Knapp, in LaGrangeville where she used to ride on the Marist Equestrian team. “If I don’t ride for a week, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m off balance.’ It just has to be a constant,” Bernadette says.
Bernadette’s passion for journalism developed during her undergraduate years. She joined the Circle as a freshman, covering speaker events and practicing the basics of producing a story. As a senior, Bernadette took on enterprise stories, notably flying down to North Carolina with the men’s basketball team to cover Marist’s match-up against Duke.
After graduation, she took a general assignment reporting job at Spectrum News in Albany, writing stories, appearing on camera and honing her interview style. Bernadette moved onto Capital Tonight in 2018 and covered the state legislature’s flip to Democratic control. The following year, she took on the role of Albany correspondent for The Post.
On a Sunday night in March 2021, arms full of groceries, Bernadette received a call from a colleague telling her that New York had its first case of the novel coronavirus.
Before the pandemic, Bernadette had only been to a handful of briefings with the Governor. Now, they were a daily ritual, drawing viewers like primetime television programming. After three weeks of what Bernadette describes as “non-stop adrenaline rushing,” it became clear that these briefings, and the virus’s toll, had no end in sight.
Covering a global pandemic requires every ounce of a reporter’s presence, Bernadette says –– listening, checking in with the governor’s aides, voraciously consuming the news and Twitter alerts, and keeping an eye on competitors. Bernadette and her fellow Albany reporters congregate on the third floor of the State Capitol, the home base for the Legislative Correspondents Association (LCA) of New York. Within exists a system of unspoken rules, balancing competitive edges and shared knowledge.
In February of 2021, Bernadette became the president of the LCA, a rotating position created as an advocate for the group as a whole. After all, they are competitors with the same mission: providing the public with the information they need. For Lepota Bernadette’s ability to find that shared mission is one of her greatest strengths.
Lepota says another strength lies in Bernadette’s capacity to see beyond her place in an organization and envision its future. “She was like, ‘Sometimes, some things have to be really slow, but in the long-term, there will be that benefit, and you have to think of long-term.’ And, to be quite honest, I listened to her and she was right.”
Her vision of her own future is far from certain, but it is her ability to face the uncertainty with conviction that defines Bernadette and drives her reporting.
“You might have an amazing day, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I got this story,’ and you’re feeling confident, and then the next day you’re just totally knocked off your feet and toppled and someone’s beat you on a scoop or your editor’s like, ‘Why didn’t you have this?’ or you just totally didn’t even think of an angle,” Bernadette explains. “That is what I think is great.”
FOR THE RECORD UNCUT
OBJECT PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography by Bobby Oliver
For this year’s project, we asked our Changemakers to bring items that had meaning to them to the shoot.
“To start with the horse items: Horses have been a constant in my life since I was a little kid -- whether it was my parents and I chasing behind galloping riders and their mounts through Central Park's bridle path as a little kid, or catching a bus and navigating through fields to a Spanish farm outside Madrid while studying abroad and even present day waking up before work to hack my trainer's horses.
I love them because for all the seemingly insurmountable barriers presented between a human and the horse -- wordless communication, deliberate strength and power, unpredictable tendencies -- there's simple freedom presented -- and shared -- between the two that once you're conscious of, makes life impossible to live without.
My journal reminds me of everything I'd love to be in my head and simply am not: even though I force myself to do it every day, I'll never be a 'journaler.' I love writing and I think it's a good exercise at the end of the day, but the medium of journaling just doesn't do it for me.”