For Kate Snow, there’s a clear and distinct line between news journalist and political commentator, and she’s happily ensconced in the former.
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“If you ask most journalists, we’ll tell you that we wall off our own thoughts and remember that our opinion doesn’t matter,” said Snow, a 1987 Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake graduate and news anchor and correspondent for NBC News. “There are certainly some people on MSNBC during prime time that are opinionated, but I am a reporter. My goal is to cover the story whatever it is. I cover all sides, lay all the facts out there, include all the angles, and let people use their own judgment.”
Snow, who got a degree in communications from Cornell University and a master’s in foreign service from Georgetown, says she never allows her own feelings to frame the story she’s working on, particularly in this hotly contested political season.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years now, and what I do is ask the challenging questions, no matter who the candidate,” she said. “I play the devil’s advocate, whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans. I ask equally tough questions of everyone.”
Snow was born in Maine but moved to Burnt Hills in 1969 when her father, Dean Snow, now professor emeritus of anthropology at Penn State, landed a teaching position at the University of Albany. She grew up on Lake Hill Road, just a stone’s throw from the high school and Falconer Farm. She says high school English teacher Stuart Horn and her seventh grade social studies teacher Rick Reynolds were her two biggest influences outside the family.
“I thought she would be a writer, and she certainly had journalistic proclivities,” said Horn, who spent 30 years with the BH-BL district. “She asked good questions and that’s what a journalist does. I think we hit it off so well because she loved the language and loved manipulating the written word. She wasn’t just mechanical. Her writing always had a flair of creativity and imagination.”
“She was a wonderful student and very involved in the classroom,” said Reynolds, now the town of Ballston historian. “I loved her, she was a smart girl and I always believed she would go a long ways. I really did.”
Experience at Cornell
However, when she left Burnt Hills and head out the New York State Thruway to Cornell University for her freshman year, she still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with herself.
“I thought I might want to be a writer, but when I went off to Cornell I kind of fell into this job at the off-campus radio station, WVBR,” remembered Snow. “I was thinking maybe a radio DJ, but they said no, they really wanted people to cover the news. I thought, ‘that might be interesting.’ If you want to draw a straight line to where I was and right now, you can start with my freshman year at Cornell.”
By the time she graduated in 1991, she was a veteran news reporter.
“I was really into it by the time I got to my senior year,” said Snow. “I had covered city council meetings, traffic accidents, I was doing the morning drive on WBVR. I really got the bug. I loved the job because it combined my inquisitive nature, I was always asking questions, and my ability to write.”
Snow landed her first professional job as a television reporter with a local station in Carlsbad, New Mexico. She also worked for NPR for a while, and from 1998-2003 was a reporter for CNN. She joined ABC in 2003 as the White House reporter for “Good Morning America,” and in 2008 covered the presidential race for ABC News, working the campaign of former First Lady and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. She changed companies again in 2010 and now can be seen in a number of anchor and correspondent roles for NBC and MSNBC. She currently hosts a two-hour show weekdays on MSNBC.
“I love following politics,” said Snow, who broadcast her show Thursday and Friday from the Fly Creek Cider Mill and Orchard near Cooperstown. “I love being back in upstate New York, and I think election time is the best thing a journalist can cover. The story changes every single day. Yes, it does get tiring and it’s hard to keep up, but it’s also fascinating. And the fact that New York is playing such a key role is really exciting. That hasn’t happened in New York in years.”
Snow lives in Westchester County with her husband, Chris Bro, who is a radio DJ in New York City. They have a 13-year-old son, Zachary, and a 10-year-old daughter, Abby.
Reach Gazette reporter Bill Buell at 395-3190 or [email protected].
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