Heard Over the Dull Roar of the Convention Floor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The NY1 News skybox at the tippy-top of Madison Square Garden is a bird’s nest of cables and cameras and newspapers and sharp elbows and excuse me, pardon me, excuse mes. It’s awfully noisy, so noisy that it’s impossible for the reporters and producers to hear each other speak or even hear themselves as their words are engulfed by the clamor from below.
Leave it to Dominic Carter, the local news station’s face of convention coverage, to press on. He spends his days taping interviews with delegates; nights, he’s on-air, during the channel’s live coverage from 7 p.m. to midnight. It all adds up to far more work than his regular show, “Inside City Hall,” calls for, and he’s running on three hours of sleep a night.
In addition to preparing for interviews and writing his own Teleprompter copy, he also soaks up five daily newspapers in order to prepare for the unplanned opportunities that fall into his lap.
Such was the case yesterday afternoon when a producer walked into the Skybox with the former speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich – Mr. Carter had about as long as it took Mr. Gingrich to crawl across the skybox to prepare for their dialogue.
The first thing that flashed in his mind when he saw Mr. Gingrich? “New Yorkers love to hate Newt Gingrich. That’s the bottom line.” But he played nice, asking about expectations for Vice President Cheney and the choice of New York as host city.
In contrast to his “Inside City Hall” colleague Davidson Goldin, who’s made a name for himself as the grandmaster of political inside baseball, Mr. Carter’s tone tends toward the conversational. He puts his guests at ease, whether it’s by warmly laughing with them or leaning over and whispering to them during commercial breaks. “What I try to do is make you forget the camera is there,” he said.
He also makes city politics accessible to viewers on the brink of flipping to MTV. “I feel like I’m changing things because I’m making politics much more interesting to people who ordinarily could care less about political arena.”
Mr. Carter, 40, has a robust laugh and solid build that tilts slightly from side to side when he walks around. Rather than using the clipped tones television journalists often favor, his creamy baritone can take on an excited – even emotional – quality.
He started out in radio, covering city politics for WLIB and WBLS, where he developed a reputation for pounding the pavement and getting scoops. In 1992, WCBS’s Steve Paulus asked him to come in for a television audition. When Mr. Paulus departed later that year to start NY1, he convinced Mr. Carter to join the station.
“He’s streetwise, savvy, he’s got tremendous instincts. He’s a bulldog.” He’s also got the messiest desk in the newsroom and Mr. Paulus cleans it up for him sometimes.
While Mr. Carter’s regular appearances on Fox News would cause some to think he’s conservative, he squirms when asked to comment.
“One thing I will say is I am greatly offended when people look at me and assume I’m a liberal Democrat. And nine times out of 10 that’s the assumption that’s being made.” Since he has close relationships with all the city’s top politicians, he refuses to disclose his leanings for fear of making any of them suspect he’s biased.
Without pandering, he seems genuinely to like the people he interviews, or listen to their positions.
“Even people whose politics I find to be disgusting I can still learn from them,” he said. “I understand it’s their public face and its what they have to do. In the worst case scenario I see them as regular people talking to a reporter and putting on a show.”
Still, he’s encountered his share of difficulties, like the time Mayor Giuliani had top aides contact Mr. Carter to tell him to go gentle on the marriage questions. As for Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Carter wishes that he would make news more often. And what about his personality? “Do I really know the Mayor?” he paused and thought about it. “I think I have a good understanding of how he works.”
In his scant free time he likes to go to his country house in Pennsylvania with his wife and children. “I love the suburbs. I love grass. And I love to grill steaks.” Usually when he’s away, he still reads the papers, but “when I’m really frustrated,” he briefly boycotts the news biz.
He hails from the Bronx, where he was raised by his grandmother and his aunt Inez. He has only seen his father about four times. And his mother had a “contentious” relationship with the other relatives, so he didn’t see much of her, either. At the first signs of trouble during high school, his aunt sent him to live with another aunt in a predominantly white suburb of Seattle. “I’d never lived in a house before in my life.” There were only two other black kids in the school: his cousins.
He’s currently finishing a memoir about his relationship with his mother, who passed away two years ago. She had been living in the projects and he was so devastated he took a break from work. “It’s very painful,” he said of the book. “I don’t want my daughter reading it until after she graduates college.”
He has been approached by one of the networks, but he says he likes his job so much he plans to keep it for the next five years. Then he’d like to go national.
What if Barbara Walters called him up and asked him to take her torch right now? He laughed heartily before saying, “I’m not a fool. I’d have to consider it.” He laughed a little more. “But I really enjoy my job.”