Norah O'Donnell

THE LONG ISLAND WOMAN INTERVIEW
by Arie Nadboy
Norah O’Donnell
Norah O’Donnell has all the ingredients for a successful television
journalist; she’s smart, attractive, has an engaging personality and
gravitates toward hard work. As a result, she’s quickly covered all the
bases in television journalism. And, she’s done it without much publicity
or fanfare.
You can see Norah O’Donnell every weekday morning along with her cohosts,
Gayle King and Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning. On weekends,
you can occasionally see her as the substitute host of Face the Nation.
Recently, she’s achieved her career dream and also contributes to 60
Minutes. She’s exactly where she wants to be and loves every minute of
it.
Ms. O’Donnell resides in New York City with her restaurateur husband,
Geoff Tracy, and their three children.
Long Island Woman met with Norah O’Donnell at her CBS office to talk
about her rise to the heights of tv journalism.
Let’ start at the beginning. Where you were born and raised
I’m an army brat. My parents are from New York. My mother’s from
Jamaica, Queens and my father is from Staten
Island. They met when my father was in med
school and he was drafted to the army. He was
doing his residency in St. Vincent’s Hospital
down in the village, so he didn’t go to Vietnam
but he stayed in the army for 30 years. They
moved to Washington DC where I was born,
then to Germany and then we moved back to
San Antonio, Texas where I spent most of my
childhood. When I was ten we moved to Seoul,
South Korea. Then we moved back to San
Antonio where I finished high school. I went to
Georgetown University, met my husband there
and lived in Washington for the next 20 years.
So that’s kind of the quick and dirty.
How did you adjust to all of those moves
Very well. You know, its interesting. When
I was first hired by NBC, one of our vice
presidents of talent mentioned to me that a lot
of our journalists are actually from military backgrounds, partly because
they are very adaptable. They don’t mind moving around because that’s
sort of what they’re used to as children.
So you were well prepared for this career.
Yes, and I was very young when we were in Germany. I was only two
years old. But Seoul, South Korea was a wonderful tour of duty in the
eighties. It was also my first foray into television. All middle school
and high school students are required to take English. My mother met
someone and they needed a young girl’s voice to make the tapes you
learn English with. I made some of those tapes. I made a little extra
money and I would go to the table at the market and buy Nike shoes or
Jack Wagner tapes or polo shirts. You know, things you do when you are
ten or eleven years old.
So I’ve had a job since I was ten years old. Even when we moved back to
Interviewing Ahmadinejad
“Then I sat down and I
was told I can’t cross my
legs. And of course, he
never addressed me by
my name.”
San Antonio, I baby-sat and worked in a Chinese restaurant as a hostess.
In Georgetown you earned a BA in philosophy and a masters degree
in liberal arts. At what point did you realize that you wanted to go into
journalism
I had a father in medicine, so maybe I wanted to do medicine. Or maybe
I wanted to be a lawyer, so I worked at a law firm my freshman year while
I was at Georgetown. Then I loved philosophy. Then my senior year I got
an internship with ABC news and that’s where I really caught the bug.
I tell people in college now to explore those interests through internships
and decide if you like those people, that type of job, the career, what they
do….. That’s how you figure out what you want to do. I really enjoyed
journalism.
You’ve shown tremendous versatility and flexibility in your field; Chief
White House correspondent, regular on the Chris Matthews show, election
coverage, news anchor, now you’re co-anchoring CBS This Morning. You
rise to each level without a lot of fanfare or controversy. That seems to
be very uncommon these days.
I think that mine was a pretty traditional path. I was a print journalist
first, so I was schooled in reporting and writing
my own stories with a notebook. I took my
own photographs for some of my stories. Then
it was kind of the beginning of cable news
and I made some appearances on cable news
shows. Then I was offered a job at some of the
networks. Then I became a correspondent at
NBC when I was 25 years old, which was young.
They taught me how to do the television side
of reporting. I certainly had some experience
from the print side, but writing for tv is different
than for a paper or a magazine.
I think the traditional path is; you cover the
White House, you cover Congress, you cover
the Pentagon. I got some pretty incredible
posts at NBC so I covered just about everything
in Washington. The thing is, with NBC having
MSNBC, I also got to do a lot of anchoring. It
really was in many ways a great opportunity to
hone my skills as a reporter, but also to develop some skills as an anchor
as well, especially during breaking news situations. So it was really a nice
combination.
I traveled all over the world with President Clinton, President Bush and
President Obama. I’ve been to every battleground state multiple times so
I’ve done a lot of traveling. I think there is something incredibly important
about being on the ground, to have to show up at a satellite truck two
hours beforehand, take a bus there, write a minute and a half script, deal
with the elements and have to feed it in through a remote truck.
Television is incredibly hard work. I think sometimes people don’t know
what goes on behind the scenes. It takes all day sometimes to put a
minute and a half script together.
Do you feel that there is still a glass ceiling for women in your industry
I think a lot has changed. I think there is incredible opportunity for