When Nick Corasaniti ‘08 was a student at Ithaca College, he dreamed of working as a reporter for The New York Times. Little did he know, only a few years later, his dream would become a reality.
A politics reporter for The New York Times, Corasaniti said most of his journalism skills came from the variety of opportunities IC had to offer.
Throughout his time at the college, Corasaniti reported for The Ithacan and freelanced for The Ithaca Journal. While he developed a growing interest in politics as a young reporter, he also spent his time at Ithaca covering sports for the school and local papers.
“The Ithaca Journal paid, so I freelanced for random high school sports covering whatever was available,” he said.
While Corasaniti said he values all of the opportunities he had on campus, he also said one of his greatest experiences as an undergraduate student was studying abroad in New Zealand. There, he contributed to Cafe Abroad, a student-run online magazine.
After graduation, he landed a job working as a news assistant at the New York Times. While working the Times is a dream shared among many aspiring journalists, Corasaniti said the 9 p.m. - 5 a.m. work days weeded out some of the competition.
After braving the overnight shift for three months, Corasaniti briefly left the Times to work in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. It wasn’t long before he began to miss the hustle and bustle of breaking news reporting.
“When you work at a daily newspaper, you develop this metabolism and energy -- there's no place in the world that can replace that.”
Corasaniti soon returned to The New York Times as a sports reporter. In 2011, he left this role to join the politics team. Soon after, he moved to Washington D.C. to be a part of First Draft, the publication’s political newsletter. For two and a half years, Corasaniti worked alongside other reporters as they built the project from scratch.
Corasaniti went on to cover the 2016 presidential election. He said what he loves most about being a politics reporter is learning people’s stories.
“You have the biggest opportunity to talk to people about what's going on in their lives,” he said. “Those stories are important and don’t always get elevated,” he said. “Journalism is powered by the stories and the people you're reporting on, and understanding what people are going through.”
During the 2016 election, Corasaniti worked on ‘Of the People’, a project aimed to humanize politics by learning the stories of those who voted in the election.
“I spent so much time in Iowa talking to farmers -- I understood their voting. It's told not through going to professionals or experts, but it just picks 14 or so lives and intertwines them into a narrative.”
During the election, Corasaniti said his multi-faceted journalism education came in handy more than he ever could have imagined.
“Understanding video editing gave me such a leg up on people who were just focused on writing,” he said. “One of the pieces where my colleague and I went out covering the Trump campaign, one of us would just go into the crowd everyday and capture video. She edited it into this masterful arc — it put you in the chaos of a Trump rally.”
While he admits the journalism education he got at Ithaca College helped propel his career, he joked that the most important lesson he learned while at IC wasn’t media related at all -- but how to survive in the cold.
“The ability to stand on a frigid tarmac and not lose your mind came from having to walk from Park to Textor.”