Opinion

Honoring City & State’s current and former journalists sets the stage for our 20th anniversary celebration.

In addition to being a fast-growing and award-winning media company over the past two decades, City & State has been a great training ground for political journalists and media executives. This week, we celebrate the accomplishments of the former and current journalists who have helped build City & State’s strong reputation for nonpartisan reporting.

Edward-Isaac Dovere, the founding editor of City Hall newspaper (a predecessor to City & State), is now a prominent national political reporter at CNN. He had successful tenures at Politico and The Atlantic and is the author of “Battle for the Soul,” a behind-the-scenes look at the Democrats’ frantic campaign to take back the White House in 2020.

Other City & State editors and reporters have gone on to successful careers in political media, communications and film documentaries. David Freedlander is a regular political features writer at New York magazine. Andrew Hawkins is the transportation editor at The Verge. Laura Nahmias covers politics for Bloomberg News.

Adam Lisberg, who helped launch City & State’s flagship First Read newsletter in 2011, is now senior vice president of external communications for Veolia North America’s municipal water business, after a successful stint as the head spokesperson at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Morgan Pehme, the editor at City & State who oversaw City & State’s groundbreaking coverage of the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, is now a successful documentary filmmaker. His Netflix doc “Get Me Roger Stone” in 2017 gained widespread acclaim because the film was released during Donald Trump’s first term and Stone was a big player in the successful 2016 Trump campaign.

Other key alumni from City & State’s history include Steve Farbman, former co-owner and CEO of City & State; Darren Bloch, a prominent nonprofit leader and former de Blasio administration official; Andrew Holt, a local political consultant; Ralph R. Ortega, vice president of public affairs at O’Donnell & Associates; and Guillaume Federighi, owner of the Hey Gee Studio.

All these alumni, and many others, have set the stage for City & State’s current team of 35 full-time employees in New York to grow the media company into the powerful force it has become in New York City and state’s political and media ecosystems.