With a career in media spanning over two decades, Hasani Gittens has seen his fair share of stories. As an enthusiast for journalism, the Queens native has never been timid about captivating himself in his work. Since graduating from Baruch College in 2001, Gittens has worked for The New York Post, NBC News and New York’s own, THE CITY, where he has served as deputy editor since 2018.
As a child of math and science, Gittens never contemplated a career in journalism. Following high school, he pursued an education in Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. However, his stint at WPI was short. After two years of the grueling education that’s expected in a STEM field, Gittens left the Massachusetts school
“For various poor life decisions, they kicked me out of there because you know it’s engineering, it’s literally rocket science. You cannot be hungover doing rocket science. Like, that’s why Engineers are really nerdy and don’t drink that much. So, I went back home to New York and went to Baruch College.”
Although he never exhibited a definite interest in journalism, after taking several English classes, Hasani joined Baruch College’s school newspaper. His time at Baruch proved formative, once joining the paper, an unprecedented spark of passion was lit. Employing his prowess of computers, Gittens wrote his first major story, a three-part piece on the arrival of Y2K. He was perpetually writing stories, as a fascination became a passion for the aspiring journalist.
“I kind of stopped going to classes. I was just constantly working on the paper. We’d be putting it out at like four o’clock in the morning. We had to go to press; it was not online at all. It was all like actual printing of paper and laying out stories.”
In the three years Hasani contributed to the Baruch paper, he became their op-eds and features editor. As graduation drew near, experience outside of the school paper soon became indispensable. Heeding his devotion to the field, one of his teachers organized an internship for him at the New York Post.
While he was initially reluctant to accept an offer from the New York Post, Gittens sought guidance from his aunt to facilitate his options. Evidently, he decided that an internship with such an illustrious publication was too advantageous to pass up. On September 3rd, 2001, he joined the New York Post as an intern. The following Tuesday, nearly a week to the date of his recruitment, tragedy captivated New York and the rest of the world.
“It got really crazy intense, a whole different feel of what it was. You know, because my view of a lot of newspapers at the time was it’s just a lot of ridiculous racism either hidden or outward. But after the second week, it was all about 9/11, all tragedy, human stories of recovery and loss. I was in the business section and I still remember the first-week people were like 'who the fuck are you?' And in the second and third weeks being all 'hey, how are you doing? Is everything okay up there?' Just the whole world changed, and it was a different feeling.”
Gittens flourished at the Post, writing two stories a week, providing assistance as a copywriter, reporter, and editor. He covered stories such as Google’s street-view privacy, the robbery of two-truck trailers in Delaware, and how New York was hardly affected by massive closures of Starbucks. As his internship approached its end, he was given an opportunity to join them in a full-time role. Despite his hesitation to accept, he spent the next seven years editing and reporting at the New York Post.
In 2008, he gave up the stability provided by the New York Post and joined NBC Online’s newly elected in-house writing staff.
“I had a reputation for being the nerd in the office, so one of my fellow reporters was like ‘Hey Hasani, you like computer stuff, right? You should look at this job that I just heard about.’ So, I got to NBC with a resume that had a coffee stain on it, like a giant sock. It was terrible. I didn’t really care about getting the job that much because I had a job, and I didn’t even know if I wanted to work for NBC News. So, they made me talk to some of the higher-ups and he asked me what I wanted to do, like long-term goals. And I said to run NBC News, and he’s like ‘really’, I was like, yeah, he’s like, ‘oh, okay’, so I kept smiling despite all of those crazy things. And I ended up getting the job.”
As part of a larger mitigation, several newspaper reporters proceeded to be hired by NBC. Throughout this enlistment, Hasani was named the Regional West Coast Editor for NBC. From New York, he oversaw cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, helping them write their respective stories online.
At NBC, he was capable of telling a more intimate narrative likewise to nationwide coverage. Many of Hasani’s stories focused on Presidential issues of former President Barack Obama and current President Donald Trump. Progressing beyond west coast coverage, Hasani Gittens ascended to Senior Editor at NBC News.
After he established a breaking-news task force, many of the stories his department told soon began to feel monotonous to Hasani. In the age of Donald Trump's tweets, national issues increasingly grew tiresome. In December 2018, after six years at NBC, Hasani officially joined THE CITY.
The publication’s persona of a paper that’s overarching aim is to benefit the local community was exceedingly alluring to him. Since joining THE CITY, Hasani has contributed to stories such as Gabriel Sandoval’s story on the RFK Bridge’s Faulty Suicide Prevention Phone.
“I think what we’ve done is combine some of the old school newspaper instincts with being online while being a kind of hyper-local type thing. So, we did the bridge story and apparently, it had been like that for a long time and people could not complain about it. So, we did the story and called around and then the next day after the story a phone was put in.”
In the two years since Hasani joined THE CITY, he has become one of the most reputable editors in local news. His attentiveness to local news is parallel to the method one approaches a global story; no element is left unchecked as he ascertains each feature. With a biography that exceeds countless years in journalism, Hasani Gittens has gained the perspicacity into what makes a wonderful journalist and an even brighter editor.
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