The New York-based reporter spoke to City Newsroom about her career in news
By Francesca Maria Lorenzini; Serena Balani; John E. Williams
At age 11 and without speaking a word of English, Gloria Pazmino came to the United States, spending her teenage years in New York and New Jersey. Today, she is covering breaking news as a national correspondent for CNN.
“I always knew that I wanted to tell stories and write, I just didn’t know exactly how I was going to do it,” Pazmino told City Newsroom in a February interview. “Being an immigrant in the city absolutely shaped my upbringing, my worldview,” she said, highlighting how journalism can be a platform to showcase the experience and voice of people who normally don’t have one.
Pazmino’s first reporting job was at the community publication Manhattan Times. “My career started in local journalism,” she said. “Local journalism, in my opinion, is essential to democracy.” She used as an example The North Shore Leader, a small Long Island publication that exposed George Santos’ lies before his election to Congress in 2020.
She later worked as a political reporter at Politico NY and Spectrum News NY1, where her career on television started. “I always say that me getting in front of a camera was sort of an accident,” she said.
At NY1, she covered the final years of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, the Covid-19 pandemic and Eric Adams’ successful mayoral campaign. She described Adams as “a fascinating character.”
“The mayor likes to entertain you,” she said, pointing at an NYPD raid the former police captain joined back in February, in which several migrants were arrested in a crime ring investigation. The mayor’s critics called it a political stunt. Pazmino said Adams likes to suggest that the NYPD is “his police,” part of his political messaging and law-and-order image he attempts to portray.
While public safety and immigration have dominated news in New York in recent years, Pazmino believes other important issues shouldn’t be forgotten. She said transportation and infrastructure issues often go underreported. “Think of the amount of people that the subway carries every day, the buses.”
And at a time when misinformation is rampant, Pazmino reminded journalists entering the profession that “your role is extremely important to the state of democracy, information and the way in which we educate voters, readers and people who consume news.”
