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When Matt Mulcahy found out he was going to be inducted into the New York State Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame, it was a humbling moment. He was mowing the lawn, sweating on a hot summer day in shorts and a T-shirt when he got the call from the head of the association. Four months later, the Syracuse TV anchor was dressed in a fancy suit, being honored on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan. His family, friends and colleagues were there to celebrate his career that’s lasted nearly four decades. “I was excited but still I felt sort of calm and confident that when they called my name I’d be composed,” Mulcahy told syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. But when they called his name, he was overwhelmed with joy and tears. “I think it’s an accumulation of all the things,” he said. “An honor like this really is special and it recognizes such a long career... There’s no way when you’re 23 or 24, whatever I was when I first sat on the couch in [WSTM-TV’s] lobby that I could imagine literally that one day I’d be in some Hall of Fame, so I think all of that made me surprisingly emotional about it.” The honor also reminded him of why he chose journalism and why the fourth estate remains important. “[There’s] the urgency of the times that our business has been under fire and criticism in a broad sense,” Mulcahy said. “Our credibility has been brought into question and I felt ... sort of a responsibility to make sure that the broadcasters in the room realize the importance of what we do every day and how urgent it is to do it the right way.” Mulcahy is the anchor and managing editor for CNY Central’s WSTM evening newscasts, delivering the day’s top stories on NBC3 at 5, 6 and 11 p.m., as well as 10 p.m. on CW6. He’s spent almost his entire career in his hometown, moving to Syracuse from Binghamton in early 1990. He’s seen and reported on a wide range of stories, from visiting the Vatican when Mother Marianne Cope was canonized as a saint to touring war-torn Bosnia with Fort Drum soldiers. He was in Central New York for the Blizzard of ‘93, the 1998 Labor Day storm, and the tornado that devastated Rome last year. He also added local perspectives to national/international events like the Covid pandemic and the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. One of his first major stories was the shooting death of Syracuse Police Officer Wallie Howard in 1990. Thirty-four years later, he covered a similar tragedy that took the lives of Onondaga County Sheriff’s Lt. Michael Hoosock and Syracuse Police Officer Michael Jensen in a 2024 ambush. “What are these people doing?” Mulcahy, 60, grew up in Syracuse and Liverpool, graduating from Liverpool High School in 1983 before getting a broadcasting degree from Ithaca College and a master’s in management and leadership from Binghamton University. As a kid, he performed in school musicals, chorus, orchestra and band, but didn’t imagine himself being on camera on a nightly basis. “I wanted to be a Yankee center fielder,” Mulcahy told syracuse.com. “I could play baseball but I wasn’t going to be at that level so that type of dream had dashed off.” But there were signs he was destined for broadcasting. Matt, his brother John, and their friend Tim used to do a radio show on tape, calling it WMUL (named after an encyclopedia volume on his parent’s shelf). They never put it on the air, though they still have fond memories of the recordings featuring their changing voices and “childish dabbling,” Mulcahy said. He didn’t initially start out in Ithaca College’s communications school, where famous alumni include David Muir and Jessica Savitch. Rather, Mulcahy found his path when a roommate encouraged him to join the campus TV station. “I noticed that people were spending countless hours in these windowless rooms,” Mulcahy recalled. “Like, ‘What are these people doing?’ You know, they don’t seem to have any lives... but it also looked really fun and engaging and challenging.” An early story he covered was President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 visit to Union-Endicott High School in Binghamton. Reagan spoke about “Which way E.J.?,” a phrase used by immigrants coming to the Southern tier to look for jobs. “There was Reagan talking about how important immigrants are to our country and our community,” Mulcahy said. “That touched me considering the environment we’re in now, where immigrants are getting such harsh criticism.” “But as an 18-year-old at Ithaca College, that really struck me as: I love being part of this. I love being in the middle of it. I saw the network crews setting up their gear and coming in and doing their stand ups and that was really a kind of a galvanizing moment that I really I could see myself doing it.” What it means to stay in Syracuse Mulcahy spent three years at WBNG-TV in Binghamton before landing a job interview with WSTM at the end of 1989. Syracuse was one of the top 60 markets at the time and is now ranked 88th nationally, according to Nielsen. Mulcahy initially thought he wouldn’t stay locally for more than three years, but now feels even more connected to the community that raised him. “The longer that more time has passed, I think the more that it’s meant to me,” Mulcahy said. His father’s 95 and his mother’s 87 — “he’s driving her crazy because he’s still alive at 95,” Mulcahy joked — and they still live close by, though his father recently moved into assisted living. Mulcahy learned a lot about their experiences in the early 20th century when he was looking into the National Archives for a story about President Joe Biden’s time in Syracuse, and found a “redlining map” of Syracuse in 1919. The map showed poor industrial areas in red, slightly better off people in yellow (where Mulcahy’s father lived), and richer classes of businessmen and merchants in green and blue around Sedgwick or Syracuse University. “On that map is written with pencil ethnic groups and where they lived. So it said ‘Italian’ on the north side, ‘Polish’ on the near west side where my father grew up, and said German descent which is where his grandparents (were), and Court Street / Wall Street was Irish descent, which is where his other side of his family were from.” “What really caught my attention was where the train station is on Erie Blvd... that was labeled ‘Negro.’ And where Adams Street is (was) labeled ‘Jewish.’ And that was the city’s official map,” Mulcahy said. “That type of story kind of gave me even stronger feelings about the value of living and working here for all this time.” Mulcahy’s investigation into the map and Syracuse’s history earned him his fifth New York Emmy Award in 2021. He also won Emmys for Best Newscast in 2015 and 2016, Best Documentary in 2000 for “Bosnia: Returning Home,” and for reports on the Heidi Allen case in 2019, plus three Edward R. Murrow Awards and numerous honors from The Associated Press and Syracuse Press Club. And all of this has been through multiple changes, including in technology, media, politics and the community. He started his Syracuse job the same year Destiny USA opened as the Carousel Center in 1990, and has continued at WSTM long after the television station merged with WTVH to become CNY Central in 2009. Mulcahy has no plans to retire anytime soon — “I’m fortunate that I really love what I do” — but does have advice for the next generation of journalists. “The first advice I’d give to younger people now is you can do it now,” Mulcahy said. “You can do it for free, you can do it on your phone... they don’t they don’t need to come to a TV station or a newspaper or a radio station.” “If you’re a student at Syracuse or Le Moyne or Oswego or Ithaca, you shouldn’t be waiting for somebody to tell you that you should do this, this and this,” he continued. “I think that anybody who has been a success in this business you know the whether it’s the Mike Tiricos or the David Muirs at that super high level or those of us, Megan (Coleman), Michael (Benny), me or Christie (Casciano) or Jeff (Kulikowsky)... Nobody’s ever had to tell us that we have to get to work, we have to work harder, we have to do a little more, we have to be thinking about this around the clock. You’re self motivated to do that.” “Technology is giving you access to things you didn’t have before so there’s no reason to not be fully engaged if you’re a younger person. Even before you walk in the door for an interview, you should be able to prove that you have what it takes.” See Matt Mulcahy’s New York State Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame speech:
