They are tough, seasoned reporters who say their Garden State upbringings prepared them for the competitive world of journalism, prepared them to ask difficult questions, prepared them to take a strong stance against the media-unfriendly atmosphere created by President Donald Trump.
Meet Dana Bash, Michelle Kosinski, and Elise Labott, CNN’s version of the Jersey Girls.
Bash grew up in Montvale in Bergen County, Kosinski is from Cinnaminson and is a Holy Cross High graduate, and Labott hails from Marlboro in Monmouth County.
“I like to say I’m from Springsteen country because it’s right next to Freehold, where Springsteen grew up,” Labott said.
All three proudly display mugs on their CNN desks that proclaim: KEEP CALM and let the JERSEY GIRL handle it.
The mugs were purchased by Bash, and they are a way to boast about their roots.
Labott said she and Bash “are always exchanging Jersey stories. Dana’s a really good friend of mine at the bureau, and we’ve really bonded over our Jersey upbringings.”
Bash said that when Kosinski first became a part of CNN’s bureau in Washington, D.C., “I immediately took to her—and I guarantee it was because she’s got the ‘Jerz’ going on.”The “Jerz,” the three women said, is a relentless work ethic to pursue a story no matter how many obstacles are in the way.
“Not only were my formative years in New Jersey, but I still consider myself really a Jersey girl,” Labott said. “I mean, when you think of Jersey, you think, ‘Tell it like it is, no bullbleep, keep it simple. Proud, humble.’ And I’ve really always tried to approach my work that way. I’ve lived in Washington for 17 years, but I really don’t consider myself a political insider in Washington. I still just consider myself a Jersey girl. When you say you’re from Jerz, you kind of consider yourself a little punky, a little gritty. I think a lot of time, officials don’t like it that much, but I’ve always kind of kept that Jerz attitude, I think.”
Growing up in a suburban South Jersey town in Burlington County, Kosinski said, was an idyllic environment.
“I spent a lot of time outside exploring, and luckily we felt safe enough to do that,” she said. “We were always walking around our neighborhood, riding our bikes to our friends’ houses, and one of our hobbies was just exploring. The parents either didn’t know or didn’t mind, but I don’t think they knew how far we would wander. Back then you felt like you could do that. I think I always had the freedom to have that sense of exploration; it gave me a sense of freedom and bravery.
“I wish I could give my kids more of that kind of freedom of childhood and space that we have in New Jersey,” she added, referring to her seven-year-old twins, Nikita and Sofia.
New Jerseyans have a competitive drive, Kosinski said, and that has aided her career.
“You have to be kind of street-wise,” she said. “Being so close to Philadelphia, it’s a tell-it-like-it-is kind of place, and also the level of education is high, and like I said, the competition really drove me to want to rise to the top in my school environment.”
The “fast-talking, street-wise” characteristics of her region, Kosinski said, “make you think fast on your feet to survive and that absolutely helped me.”
Kosinski used to be NBC News’ foreign correspondent based in London, but now that she works for CNN in Washington, D.C., she returns to her Cinnaminson roots every few weeks.
“It’s great being so close to my family. It’s only a three-hour drive up the old turnpike,” said Kosinski, who joined CNN in 2014. “I love going back. The thing that always grabs me is the smell of summertime in the New Jersey suburbs. It’s so green and full of trees and flowers—and the smell of it just kind of fills [me] with memories of childhood.”
These three women all have a long list of accomplishments and awards, including several Emmys.
Kosinski is CNN’s senior diplomatic correspondent who covers the State Department. Bash is CNN’s chief political correspondent and is the network’s lead reporter covering the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and Labott is CNN’s global affairs correspondent, covering U.S. foreign policy and international affairs.
Bash, who attended Pascack Hills High, said she didn’t think about becoming a journalist until her years at George Washington University.
“I put my head down and started to focus more when I went to college and started to think what I wanted to do,” she said. “My dad was in TV news as a producer for ABC News, so I was always around it. But frankly, when I was younger, I was turned off by it because as a kid, my perspective was that you don’t make your own schedule and when news breaks you have to go home from vacation. That was the way I looked at it as a little kid.”
Bash paused.
“But as I got older, I was definitely drawn more to it,” she added.
Bash said she still gets a “rush” when covering a major story.
“It’s the adrenaline, right?” she said. “When there’s a big story and you’re trying to get information on it or trying to get it first, I think that’s the rush that keeps us all going. There are a lot of days where you’re working on a daily story that’s not going to get your adrenaline pumping, but (major stories) happen a lot, particularly working at CNN and in cable news and obviously these days in this environment.”
Kosinski says it’s exhilarating to cover a major event, “but sometimes it’s really controlled. For big political events, it’s so orchestrated and so controlled that sometimes you almost roll your eyes and think, ‘OK, this is theater.’ It’s still important and it’s still a big deal, but it’s a lot of theater and a lot of spin.”
But when you get to do some one-on-one reporting and “ask questions on behalf of the American people, Kosinski said, “that’s when it touches you and you get that tingle and feeling, ‘Wow, I’m really doing something that is significant or that I feel really good about.’”
Labott got her first journalism job at a weekly shopper magazine in North Jersey, reporting on several Bergen County towns. “That’s where I learned community journalism, covering school boards, local elections and council meetings,” she said. “That’s really where it all started. A town like Englewood was really a microcosm at the time for what was going on in a lot of other areas of the country.”
After going to grad school and doing some TV work, Labott took a job at CNN as a producer in 2000 before “working my way up” to a correspondent. “I like being in front of the camera because I like talking a lot,” she said. “I actually was voted the most talkative in high school. I really like explaining things and being able to learn and explain it to people.”
All three women are puzzled and disappointed that since Trump entered the White House, there has been much less media access than in other presidencies.
“There’s a big danger in that,” Bash said. “We as the press, we are not the enemies. The way the Founding Fathers envisioned a democratic government is very integral to challenge elected officials—the President, Congress, local and all around. When access is limited and when we’re not told things in an accurate way, it’s bad for us (in the media) but it’s worse for the public. It’s terrible. It’s a big problem, and that’s why you see across the board, networks like CNN and newspapers and other outlets fighting for more access” from Trump.
Bash added that “the irony is that he was incredibly accessible during the campaign. It’s odd because he changed for lots of reasons. He claims we turned on him, but he just became a more prominent figure and the tough questions we were already asking became more important as he became one step closer to being president of the United States.”
And now that he is president, “he can’t live in a bubble of (his) Twitter followers and people who just agree with you.”
The Jersey Girls were asked their reaction when Trump sarcastically referred to CNN as the Clinton News Network during his campaign against Hillary Clinton.
“The thing that’s most disturbing is when he called us fake news, because we’re not,” Bash said. “And one of the reasons it’s so disturbing is because there actually is fake news out there. Really dangerous fake news that people should not take seriously on the Internet. He tried to blur the lines and make legitimate news organizations—organizations he knows are legitimate—into ‘fake news.’ It isn’t just irresponsible, but it’s dangerous.”
“I’ve covered Republican and Democratic administrations and we’ve always approached it the same way, which is really to keep being an equal-opportunity offender in the sense of holding people accountable,” said Labott, who has reported from more than 80 countries and has interviewed and traveled the world with five Secretaries of State. “I won’t say they like it or enjoy it, but they’ve always understood that it’s the fabric of a healthy democracy. So I hope it gets better. All we can do is keep doing our jobs. All we can do is what we have control of, and that’s to keep asking questions and to keep showing up. Even if they’re not going to say anything at the press conference or photo ops,” you stay on them.
“And that’s really the Jersey attitude. Keep going at them and keep getting in their faces, and keep trying to demand answers.”
Kosinski said it was “ridiculous” how Trump has put limitations on the media. “Less access is always dangerous in a democracy,” she said. “If you openly state that the press is an enemy of the American people, where have we ever heard that before in a democracy, let alone in America? If you’re just going to be blocking it off and saying those kinds of things, that just makes you look scared of it. You would think they would be wanting to do the exact opposite and fully explaining (their positions), and I think over time, this administration probably will realize that.”
Bash, who was once married to CNN’s chief national correspondent, John King, has become one of the network’s most visible reporters. She credits others for giving her direction.
“I’ve had a lot of mentors and I’m really lucky,” Bash said. “Candy Crowley, who used to be at CNN for a long time, was the best writer in television news, and was a pioneering woman in television news. The same goes for Judy Woodruff, who is now the anchor at PBS NewsHour. When I first started at CNN, she was an anchor at CNN. They’ve both been huge role models for me.”
Labott knows exactly when she decided to pursue journalism.
“I was always interested in cultures in the world, and social studies was one my favorite subject,” she said, recalling her time at Marlboro High. “And in my senior year, I took an honors class called Global Studies. I really wanted to get into this class, and the teacher, his named was William Gorman, had an amazing class. It was all about international relations, and we were reading foreign affairs long before it was fashionable. This was the late ‘80s and he was talking about all these international stories that he heard about on CNN. I mean, I hadn’t heard about half these places. I was like, ‘I want to work for this CNN one day.’”
That class, Labott said, steered her on her career journey.
She said Gorman, her high school teacher, is now a professor at Monmouth University “and we’ve kind of reconnected on Facebook and I always tell him he really is responsible for putting me on this path.”
Kosinski, the Cinnaminson native, remembered a fifth-grade project at St. Charles Borromeo School in which students had to write about what they wanted to be when they grew up. “I couldn’t decide, and our teacher, Sister Chris, said, ‘I think you’re going to be a journalist.’ (I guess) she had a communication with God,” Kosinski said with a grin. “She knew something.”
Labott said her job is less glamorous than many think.
“There’s a lot of shoe-leather reporting, doing your homework and being prepared. It’s hard work and it’s also very rewarding work,” she said. “Again, the values I learned in Jersey (were critical). It’s showing up, doing the work and just not taking ‘No’ for an answer. That kind of dogged-reporting mentality is really what has been instilled in me my whole life.”
Labott, who covered the United Nations for ABC News before joining CNN, has interviewed several heads of state and international newsmakers.
“It’s about staying humble and realizing you’re really fulfilling an important service for the country,” she said. “It’s not about fame and it’s not about glory. It’s about public service.”
For aspiring journalists, “the most important thing is to do what you love,” Bash said. “You can be ambitious and that’s a good thing, but the truth is, you will climb in the ranks in whatever you choose to do if you love what you do. If you love it, you’re more than likely going to excel at it.”
Especially if you developed your tenacity by growing up in New Jersey.
Photos courtesy CNN
