Good Morning, New York
Sukanya Krishnan ’93 takes Big Apple’s a.m. news by storm
By Barbara Snyder Stambaugh

Krishnan prowls the newsroom after completing her morning broadcast.

Our appointment’s at 10 a.m. Right on time, Sukanya Krishnan blows in like a hurricane. She’s pure pluck and pizzazz. She’s an arresting beauty, eyes bright black, her smile visible from outer space.

“We’re in crisis mode,” she says, those eyes flashing around the news division of WPIX-TV in New York City. She waves at a group of co-workers across the room. They give her teasing looks, aware that the tables have turned—she’s the one being interviewed for a change—and she cracks up. That laugh of hers. It’s raucous.

“Everybody’s crazy here,” she says. “We’re all strung out on caffeine … with a cappuccino chaser.”

The hours of a morning-show anchor/ reporter are terrible. She rises at 2 a.m., hits the studio by 3:30 and works until late afternoon. “It’s all upside down. At 8 a.m.,” she says, “I’m craving a hamburger. By 4 o’clock, I’m a zombie.”

So, with that schedule, how come she looks like she just got back from a spa vacation?

“Fabulous make-up artist,” she says.

She gives the studio tour—lights, cameras, cables strung every which way—talking as she goes on about the famous people she’s run across.

Her favorite interview subject so far? John Cusack.

Her least favorite? A rock ’n’ roll star. You know him. Turns out, he’s long on looks, short on manners.

Krishnan’s TV-news career began after she graduated from Dickinson. She took some journalism classes at New York University, and a professor there suggested the news.

“I sat in a station manager’s office at TV-55 on Long Island and convinced him to hire me,” Krishnan says.

Once on the job as an intern, she managed to snag a few stories of her own and assemble a video tape of her work.

“I sent out four tapes a week,” she says. “I was determined.”

From Long Island, she went to Utica, N.Y., then to Harrisburg. “Earning [her] muscle,” she worked as an anchor, editor, producer, reporter, traffic, weather—anything.

But all the while, she was itching for New York City—it’s home for her. Krishnan grew up on Staten Island, after moving from Madras, India, when she was 8. She loves the city’s pace and diversity.

“I’m Indian,” she says, “but I grew up in an Italian neighborhood, and I majored in Spanish in college … I can say ‘forgeddaboutit’ in three languages!”

While in Harrisburg, Krishnan hired an agent and got her big break—CBS News. In 1997 she became the first Indian woman working in the New York market.

There, she’d pass Mike Wallace in the hall. She’d find herself in an elevator with Ed Bradley. She’d see Andy Rooney “swagger” into work. This was the big time.

“I was up for it … I have balls,” she says, laughing and apologizing for her “New York potty mouth.”

“I always think I can do anything,” she continues. “Then, one day, I was at City Hall. While I was waiting to interview Rudolf Giuliani, there I was, chatting with Kofi Annan. It put me in my place. I realized how green I was. But the veteran reporters admired my chutzpah, I guess.”

She became a reporter for CBS Nightside in June 1997 and, for the most part, she loved the ride.

But when her contract expired, she decided it was time to move on.

“It was hard to leave CBS, but I’ve never regretted it. Here [at WPIX, the flagship station of the WB Television Network], I’m part of the decision-making process. I couldn’t enterprise at CBS. Here, I do hard news, entertainment, topical issues. [I’m an] in-studio anchor, street reporter. The whole gamut.”

The news business took an ugly turn on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s hard for her to talk about that day. She gets teary.

“I was anchoring when the towers went down,” she says. “As soon as the main anchors got in, I was out at Ground Zero. It’s the most pressure I’ve ever felt.

“Shards of glass. My eyes were burning. And the weary faces of firefighters. We were all so hopeful at first. But no one was coming out. I hated being part of that day. One guy broke down on my shoulder. On camera. I was holding him. I was reassuring him, and I didn’t feel reassuring.”

She turns away. End of subject.

It’s this heartfelt connection with folks on the street that makes Krishnan the kind of TV personality that people connect with. As she walks around New York, people often yell, “Hey Suke!”

“I’m my own melting pot,” Krishnan says. She’s active in South Asian leadership organizations, but sometimes, people can’t guess what her heritage might be. “Indians don’t think I’m Indian. Hispanics think I’m half whatever. I grew up Hindu and went to a Catholic school.”

Dickinson, she says, was her first wake-up call.

“But it was a great wake up. It was the first time that I felt different, that I realized that the world was different. I showed up in my leather jacket and Doc Martens. I thought I was cute as pie. I find all these girls wearing Gap skirts and pearls. I didn’t know what L.L. Bean was. But Dickinson never pigeon-holed me. I moved within crowds and broke down walls.”

Krishnan made Dickinson her own, even graduating as president of the senior class.

“I found a niche in Spanish. I loved Alberto Rodríguez. He told me, ‘You’ve got Spanish in your soul. You feel the language.’ I went to Málaga, and it just made my Dickinson experience. There were other professors … Arturo Fox, Enrique Martinez-Vidal. And T. Scott Smith in physics. We had the ‘Indian’ thing. We keep in touch.”

Besides her professors, what does she remember most? Her memories sound like Dickinson alumni code words. “Cushies. The smell of mulch. Scoping on the wall,” she says, and she laughs in a way that makes you wish you’d been there with her.

In the newsroom, Krishnan is joking with her co-workers or conferring with a producer about an upcoming news segment. Whatever she’s doing—she’s animated.

“Hey,” she says, “I’m a party in a bottle. Just uncork me.” •

Dickinson College, PO Box 1773, Carlisle, PA 17013, 717-243-5121