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A Front Row Seat
to Life,  Barbara
Pinto ’86, ABC News

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“A Front Row Seat to Life”

ABC News Correspondent Barbara Pinto ’86 talks about Houghton, high heels and hurricanes

    For the past three years, Barbara Pinto has served as an ABC News correspondent, based in Chicago. Barbara's journey from the Catskill Mountains to Houghton to ABC News is an intriguing one. Her pieces covering Hurricane Katrina last summer were particularly compelling, and that is where we began our conversation.—Tim Nichols ’81

Nichols: I saw some of your pieces from Hurricane Katrina; that must have been an incredible story to cover.

     Pinto: We tend to tell stories from 30,000 feet—but this story was so big, it seemed nearly impossible to convey the true picture. You had to tell the small, human stories in order to convey what it was like to go through this. There is trauma, and then there is trauma through the eyes of a child. Those were the pieces that made up the big story. It is one thing to see the images of destruction and another to see it in the faces of the people. Another thing the cameras couldn't convey was how hot it was, this story played itself out in nearly unbearable heat.

We cover a lot of heartbreaking stories, but also heart-lifting stories. We were able to help a woman in Houston find her preemie baby she’d lost in the storm. She was wandering around the Astrodome showing the baby’s picture to everyone she could find. We were able to get involved and help reunite them; that was amazing.

I remember seeing that! I noticed in this story that the line between journalism and rescue seemed to blur. I saw reporters in boats helping with rescues and deliveries.

Professional ethics tell you to draw the line, to maintain journalistic detachment, but in a setting like that, your heart is breaking and your first instinct is to help them and feed them. We found ourselves in situations where we gave away our own food and water. This was no normal story. The bottom line is that even though you are a journalist you’re a human being first. I'm still not sure if I've processed it. You come home from a story like that and realize that you have never really had a bad day. I still wake up in the night dreaming about it.

Do you mind backing up and telling us about your career path? How did you come to Houghton?

            I actually had received a scholarship at a secular school closer to my house, but my Dad was a pastor and wanted me to go to a Christian school—parental prodding, you know! At the time I was considering medicine and I knew that Houghton had a high acceptance rate to medical schools. I didn’t know a lot about Houghton, but I’d heard that it was “Christian College Ivy League,” so I decided to give it a try.

How was your Houghton experience?

            What has stayed with me has been the relationships. I met some of my dearest, life-long friends there—people who still stand in the gap for me, people who still pray for me. I learned great classroom lessons, too. I remember debate with Professor Rozendal, and Professor Wing’s lessons on journalism.

You mentioned that you were interested in a career in medicine, so how did you land in journalism?

            I did think about medicine, but I always knew I wanted to be a writer, for as long as I can remember. I wanted to be able to tell stories. One of my dearest friends from my Houghton years, Tashna (Hendriks ’86) Benjamin, would tell you it is because I’m nosy! When I was growing up, my dad was in city government in New York, and so we’d have the mayor and other influential people over to our home for dinner. Later, Dad decided to go to seminary and become a pastor. So we ended up having homeless people at our home. That was unlike anything my friends were experiencing. No one even knew that these people existed. It became increasingly important to me to tell their stories.  

How did you break into journalism?

I headed to New York City after graduation. I got a job on the foreign news desk of the Associated Press. My mom had cancer at the time; she hadn’t even been able to make it to my graduation from Houghton. After only three days at AP, I had to move home to help care for her. I got a job at a local radio station doing the news. I stayed at home the next few months until my mom died.

            Next I worked, for free, at a small cable station. I did everything there! I can remember covering the Tawana Brawley story by lugging around over 100 pounds of camera gear—writing, shooting and editing my own stories. Then I’d come back to the office, try to straighten out my hair and sit down at the desk to anchor the news. Oh, it was horrible! I had a bad ’80s perm, and awful make-up and clothes. People must have tuned in just for the laughs!

            Believe it or not, another station hired me. I moved on to a larger station in the Hudson Valley so I could be near my dad at a time when we really needed each other. I still needed a parent and he needed to know how to run the vacuum cleaner. I worked there for four years and then got hired by a CBS affiliate in Hartford, CT. I ran their New Haven bureau. From there, I went on to full-time freelance work at CNBC on the Wall Street Journal Report, and at MSNBC. In 2001, they laid off all their freelancers, so I was out of work on 9/11, but came back to CNBC that day because there was such a great need for coverage.

            I had interviewed at ABC years earlier, and done some work for them as a freelancer, filling in for a correspondent who was on maternity leave. There’s no straight line to anything in television—you bounce around.

            I went through a real dry spell before ABC. I thought I’d never work again. But you can’t see around the corner; you just have to trust. I was able to stay near my dad during those years and I was there when he collapsed and needed a triple bypass. Nothing seemed to open up for me professionally during that time, but as soon as Dad was better and I was through caring for him, a door opened.

How’s the travel and hotel life?

            There’s very little glamour involved in the news: when you get a hotel, that’s good! Sometimes you end up sleeping in an RV and eating food out of vending machines. In a hurricane situation you often end up showering in cold water by flashlight—if you get to shower at all. Even still, you are so much better off than the people you are covering.

            From a professional standpoint, traveling is great. You basically get a front row seat to life. You are always seeing the world through other people’s lives. You’re parachuted into a situation where you are dealing with other people in their worst moments. It softens your heart to the human condition and to people who are in trouble.

Do you have any reflections on your liberal arts education and the work you are doing?

            Life is liberal arts—so much of what we do is about larger themes. What I do incorporates so many aspects. In this field you need to know a little bit about everything, which represents the heart of a liberal arts education—having both the wealth and breadth of information to draw from.

What advice would you have for a student who wants to go into journalism?

Three things: read, then read, and then read some more. Educate yourself about what is going on in your world. And then, of course, learn how to write well, and concisely. There’s no sense in knowing the story if you can’t tell it effectively.