By: Justin Gick ’16
Assistant Editor in Chief

I had the opportunity to interview veteran Action News reporter Nora Muchanic. Ms. Muchanic shared that she was born and raised in New Jersey in a town called South Amboy.  This is in Middlesex County. She had participated in the school newspaper from grammar school through college and always thought she was going to be a newspaper reporter. In her senior year at college, Ms. Muchanic had an internship at a local cable television station up in North Jersey.  It was called Gateway Columbia. While there, they let her do stories and appear on the air. She was “learning while doing”. The station had one of their reporters leave for a New York job. Since it happened during her senior year of college, they asked her if she wanted to work full time.  She was very excited. She made arrangements with her professors and finished out her college work and went right to her new reporting job. Ms. Muchanic told me she attended Ramapo College in North Jersey and graduated in 1979. I had also read that Ms. Muchanic worked for NJN, WHTM-TV in Harrisburg and WWAC- TV in Atlantic City as a reporter.
One day the station announced that they were going off the air for unknown reasons. There was a news director from Harrisburg Pennsylvania that was on vacation in Ocean City. He saw their last show on the air.  He went to a phone booth and called the station to see if anybody wanted to come and talk to him about getting a job at his station. Ms. Muchanic can recall blowing the director off because she really wanted to go to Channel 6. She was really still young and not ready for them yet. After being out of work for a few months, she went back and talked to the news director and he hired her.
Ms. Muchanic was in Harrisburg for two years. She then moved onto New Jersey Network news where she covered Ted Kennedy in Atlantic City, hurricanes, and the Baby M trial (it was the first surrogate parent trial).
Ms. Muchanic was at NJN when Channel 6 New Jersey reporter, Phyllis Burke had left. She was stationed at the Trenton Bureau. Ms. Muchanic said that when you are out in the field you are working side by side with these people. So even when she was working for NJN she would still be covering stories with Channel 6 reporter, Cathy Gandolfo. She would also work with the people from Channel 10 and other stations. When Phyllis Burke left the Action News Trenton Bureau, her job became open and Ms. Muchanic applied for it. She thinks that Cathy Gandolfo and some of the photographers who knew her from out in the field, put in a good word for her, and she finally got the job!
Ms. Muchanic joined Action News in 1986 and technology has changed quite a bit since then. They went from video tapes to P2 cards and non linear editing. To switch to computer editing was probably the most stressful couple of months she had in her entire career at Channel 6. She exclaims it was a horror show because it was learning something brand new. Ms. Muchanic does almost all of her own editing. Actually, most reporters today do not do their own editing. Ms. Muchanic has worked with the same photographer for most of her career at Channel 6 which is also really unusual because most of the other reporters that work in Philadelphia will have a different photographer every time they go out. She has been riding around in the news van for 28 years.
Next, I wanted to know what New Jersey Governors she has covered during her time at Action News. She said she can think all the way back to Brendan Byrne. She has a picture of her in the basement interviewing former Governor Brendan Byrne.  It was in Atlantic City.  He was Governor of New Jersey in the early 80’s. Ms. Muchanic has interviewed every NJ Governor since him.
Next, I wanted to know what goes through Ms. Muchanic’s head before she does a live shot. She said she thinks to herself, “I hope I do not mess up.” Even after thirty plus years, Ms. Muchanic still gets nervous for a live shot because there is always a possibility that you are going to mess up. If it is taped, you can control, fix, and put the pieces together.  You can make it perfect. She said that unless it is breaking news, she usually does a live shot with a note pad in front of her in case she forgets. She can look down and jog her memory of what she wanted to say. It might be that you are going live for 20 seconds at the top and 20 seconds at the end of the story. She still fears forgetting what she is supposed to say.
I wanted to know if Ms. Muchanic had to go out of state when big stories come up and she said she did.  A few years back, there was a rare earthquake in California and she was at the Justice Complex in Trenton covering a story.  The station paged them to go to Newark Airport immediately and get on a plane. They had to head to California to cover the earthquake. They did not have bags, clothes, or amenities; they just had to get on the plane and go to California to cover the earthquake. She has also been to Panama with some of the flight crews working out of Mcguire Air Force Base. She also went up to Hyannis Port, Massachusetts when John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane went missing. She even went to Israel for the 15th anniversary of Statehood.
When Hurricane Sandy hit the Jersey Shore in 2012, Ms. Muchanic turned a solid month of reporting into covering nothing but this event. She said you need to picture how many shore towns there are and every town had a story. She can remember that she and her photographer would go from place to place. We would think we saw everything already and then we would find more. The damage and the destruction was so big, so wide, and it affected a lot of people. There were so many angles to it.  Besides all of these things, then we watched the clearing of the streets. She explained that Long Beach Island had sand in the streets and it looked like a snow storm had occurred, but it was three feet of sand.  People who lost everything, shared their personal stories.
Ms. Muchanic shared that when     interviews come up quickly she has to prep right away. She said there is always a basic outline for reporters which is the who, what, when, where, why, and how. You are sort of just dancing on your feet. If you are going to the scene of an accident, a murder, or a fire, there are just some basic questions to consider. You report “What did you see?”, “What did you hear?”, and “What do you already know?” It gets people talking so that you can get your information. Sometimes, based on what they say, it can lead you to your next question.
I was interested in knowing what advice Ms. Muchanic would give to students who want to go into this field. She said that she cannot say this enough, but be sure to apply for and work in internships. She explained that almost everybody in their newsroom was an intern at one point or another and these internships often lead to jobs. It did for her and many people in the newsroom. It gives you a chance to really see what is going on and if you like what is happening. As you try different types of internships, you get a feel for if this is the work you want to do. It also gives potential bosses a chance to see what type of worker you are. Then when jobs do open, they look back and say we should bring that person back in because they have an idea of how you work and what your personality is like. It is really important.