Infiltrating an NYC Politician’s Worst Nightmare (or: A Day in the City Hall Press Room)
The reporters of the infamous “Room 9” are more than just the politics they cover.
Scribbled onto a sheet of white printer paper with a sharpie, “Righteous indignation starts here,” reads a homemade sign on the blue-ish jade green wall of one of the many rooms of the New York City Hall building. Another just like it hangs just inside the doorway, proudly declaring “Honorable Reporters, Room 9 City Hall.”
Tucked away, the door to the press room at the New York City Hall has no fancy designation on the outside to distinguish what one would be walking into. Inside, less than a dozen reporters sit at metal, beige desks. On the wall, a child’s drawing of a bright orange cat with the caption “the cat is pooping” scribbled in brown crayon on the bottom hangs behind a hunched over reporter, furiously typing away at his computer.
Since its completion in 1811, New York City Hall is the oldest continually-used city hall in the country. A New York Times article attributes the creation of its media outpost to Mayor A. Oakey Hall during his tenure, dating it to sometime during the 1860s, roughly 50 years after the building opened. Back then, only men were permitted in the press room. It’s been operating somewhat consistently (with a few “brief” relocations) since. Katie Honan, a reporter for The City, proudly plucked a framed picture off the wall and passed it around — a black and white image of Room 9 back in 1952. She says, to her knowledge, it’s currently the only active city hall press room in the country. Their door sign isn’t a lie, many of the reporters seem to truly view themselves as the honorable few that have the privilege to be there.
A shelf jutting out from the wall holds both a miniature model of the Staten Island Ferry and a can of Easy Cheese. Beneath, buried amongst books such as “Modern Election Law” and “The Fixer,” sits a small figurine of the Tardis from the popular sci-fi show Doctor Who. There are a number of other homemade sharpie signs on the wall, including one that says “hyper complaint dynamic zone,” a reference to a 2018 comment from former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio in which he arbitrarily designated a large number of sexual harassment complaints against the Department of Education as false, citing a culture with a “hyper complaint dynamic.”
Other cheeky pieces of political tchotchke hang off every conceivable surface. In the corner of the room sits Bo Dietl’s infamous “pee here” bullseye, which the former mayoral candidate and NYPD detective held up at a 2017 press conference in response to a policing policy which discouraged arrest for “quality of life” offenses such as public urination. On another wall hangs a mock cover of the New York Post with the headline “Safest Summer in 20 Years, But We Still Hate de Blasio.” This parody newspaper cover story was posted by the former mayor to the official @NYCMayor account back in 2015. Apparently, it wasn’t quite the blow to the press corps that he thought it would be.
At the front, a group of people are gathered around, passing time before an upcoming press conference by doing impressions of various politicians. They gesture to the multiple snacks around the office, noting they’re for anyone. Honan points me to a half-eaten loaf in a bed of tinfoil: soda bread, she says — she made it herself.
One of the press secretaries takes a seat amongst the chatty journalists. Politico reporter Joe Anuta looks up from his computer. “Anything juicy?” he asks her.
Anuta, a reporter for Politico for 5 years now, is one of the few reporters from the company who get to cover City Hall from this room. When he first started in Room 9, he used to cover City Council. Now, he has the honor of covering the Mayor’s Office. Despite the contention between the current administration and the press, Anuta has a good relationship with current Mayor Eric Adams, who he clarifies knows many of the other reporters personally as well. Anuta is dressed simply, wearing dark wash jeans and a navy blue button up. If you saw him on the subway, you’d never know he has a calendar full of seasonally photoshopped photos of Mayor Eric Adams with the now-retired NYPD patrol robot given to him by the mayor himself as a Christmas gift.
On his desk sits the city’s preliminary budgets for 2023 and 2024. One side of his desk is occupied by a monitor displaying minutes for the upcoming City Council stated meeting later today, and the other holds a propped-up laptop which he’s using to look through social media. The other reporters, still gathered around Anuta’s desk, chat about their favorite restaurants to kill time before the meeting. Someone brings up Taco Bell and Anuta breaks from the agenda to enthusiastically inquire “anyone try the new items?”
On another wall hangs rows of clippings of headlines from Mayor Adam’s tenure, such as “Commishin’ Impossible” from publications such as City & State NY, The New York Post, and New York Daily News. Before, the wall honored former mayor Bill de Blasio in the same fashion. Back during his time in office, Room 9 had a news clipping on the door that read “Mayor de Blasio’s Worst Nightmare.”
In recent decades, the city’s mayors have often had contentious relationships with the press reporting on them. However, Adams has had an especially contentious relationship with the press than his predecessor. He has not been shy about his disapproval of his press coverage, but it’s his direct method of challenging journalists that is particularly troubling, especially to those in Room 9. Recently, he even threatened to reduce the number of reporters in the press room to just one per outlet. However, it’s important to not feed into the antagonism, one reporter emphasized; “If you don’t react, it loses its power.”
A member of the City Council speaker’s press office enters the room. “I heard you guys sell merch,” he inquired with a smirk. Honan shoots up from her desk and runs over, holding a large black trucker hat with the slogan “Stay Focused, No Distractions and Grind” embroidered across the front. It’s her work philosophy, she laughs. Anuta holds up his matching version. While Honan explains her plans to make more, Anuta clicks off the minutes for the upcoming meeting and starts inputting the slogan into a copyright database. After a few minutes, he announces the verdict: it’s not reserved. “Great, so we can sell them!” Honan laughs.
Just after noon, roughly half of the reporters headed for a press conference down the hall. Anuta and his deskmate, fellow Politico reporter Emily Ngo, don’t budge. Now that most are now live streamed since the Covid-19 shutdown, they don’t need to attend every event in the building. This way, Ngo says, she can do things like eat her salad and put on makeup. If they miss something, she and Anuta will just get the notes from one of the reporters who did attend. The reporters of Room 9 are not as cutthroat as one might expect. “We compete…but it is a community,” said Ngo. They help each other out where they can, sharing notes, transcripts, sometimes even interviews. “We’re all in this together,” explains Anuta.
Katie Honan, still donning her prized trucker hat, proudly shows off the plants she keeps on a nearby windowsill upon request. She has a particular fondness for snake plants, which she’s filled the sill with through a gardening technique called propagation. Honan aims to make the office space feel comforting and welcoming, bringing in plenty of snacks, especially her homemade baked goods. She notes that it was her who hung multiple handwritten signs with the wifi code around the space, in order to make visitors feel welcome, readily offering her business card.
As the shadows of the snake plants grow longer, the population of the room thins out, reporters intermittently leave to take calls with sources or join zoom meetings. Those who remain occasionally stop their work to announce something to the group, sharing a quick giggle before going back to their work. Honan interjects with a shush, playfully remarking “can you not read my hat?”
Anuta leaves to pick up lunch, first taking everyone else’s orders. He likes to get his lunch from a shop called Pisillo Italian Panini — He notes that its owners are from the same small Italian town as de Blasio’s family. As Anuta returns to his post, City Council member Joe Borelli enters the room, making a b-line for the soda bread.
