Not sure how best to achieve that dream, she applied to Columbia Law School. The director of admissions saw her application and called her at home in Maine. “We’re inclined to admit you,” she recalls him saying, “But you say you want to be a journalist, and I just want to tell you there are many easier ways to become a journalist.” She was frank: She didn’t know those ways. “I told him, ‘And if I want to cover the law, then I think I should know something about it.’” He essentially admitted her on the spot.
McFadden enrolled in Columbia’s journalism school at the same time but never got her journalism degree because she landed a job first. (She graduated from law school in 1984.) It wasn’t your typical interview: She had been in a class with the legendary newsman Fred Friendly, and one of her assignments was to argue the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan case, which in a 9–0 decision ruled in favor of the free press. Her task—to argue for the government and against the Times—was difficult enough; then just before class she learned Floyd Abrams, the lawyer for the Times, would be observing.
McFadden nailed it. Afterward Abrams issued Friendly a challenge: “Either you hire her as a journalist, or I’m hiring her as a lawyer,” McFadden recalls. “I always say I was won in a bet.” She did go to work with Friendly, though not before trying to negotiate her pay. “I said, ‘You know, Fred, I think you’re paying me half of what you paid the guy who had the job before me.’ And he said, ‘You don’t have the experience the guy had; you don’t have a family like the guy has. I’m taking a chance on you. Take the job or not.’” She tells the story with a cranky newsman’s voice, and the wisdom of a woman who has learned to pick her battles. “He had a point, and I had a point,” she says. “I took the job.” She has zero regrets, and calls working for him one of the great experiences of her career. “I’ve been so, so lucky,” she says about many of the opportunities she’s had. “But the harder you work, the luckier you become.”
Charm also helps, and friends call McFadden “magnetic” and “wickedly smart.” And even celebrities were not immune. While still an undergrad at Bowdoin College, McFadden became close with Katharine Hepburn “through a whole series of misadventures” (Hepburn was in her late sixties at the time). She can do a fantastic impersonation of the late actor, reciting some of Hepburn’s lessons that were wise—and unwise. (There’s this one: “‘Sometimes you just have to be too dumb to get it.’ Man, that helps. Because sometimes somebody says something that hurts your feelings, or we don’t get the assignment,” McFadden explains. “Instead of responding to every situation, sometime you have to be ‘too dumb to get it’ and just keep smiling.” But also: “Never buy firewood; steal it or chop it yourself.”) McFadden was also a bridesmaid for Liza Minnelli (for her wedding to David Gest) and longtime friends with the gossip columnist Liz Smith.
But it wasn’t McFadden’s friends who impressed her colleagues; it was her work ethic. “She’s an incredible collaborator,” says Katie Hinman, an executive producer at CNN who worked with McFadden for more than five years at Nightline on ABC. And a passionate one: “Drive is really important for these types of stories,” says Romo, senior enterprise producer at NBC News. “People often ‘say, 'I want to do that type of reporting.’ But saying it and doing it are two different things. Cynthia is 100 percent in it; it’s incredible to watch and be a part of that.” Adds her colleague, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News' chief foreign affairs correspondent, “she’s always embodied this determination and dedication to impactful storytelling.”
