Joan Ganz Cooney - Early Career

Early Career

After graduating in 1951, Joan Ganz moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a clerk and typist at the State Department. She was exposed to Father James Keller's Christopher Movement, which inspired her to become involved with television and the media. As Ganz later said, "Father Keller said that if idealists didn't go into the media, nonidealists would". She returned to Phoenix and despite no experience in journalism, took a job as a reporter at the Arizona Republic. Eighteen months later, in 1953 and at the age of 23, she moved to New York City and was a publicist for the next ten years, initially for David Sarnoff at RCA, then at NBC writing press releases and soap opera synopses, and then for the United States Steel Hour at CBS. During this time, she became involved with liberal Democratic politics and as writer Cary O'Dell stated, "fell into with a literary set of young writers and editors who gathered at the West Side apartment of Partisan Review editor William Phillips". Some of this "notable group" included Jason Epstein and Norman Mailer. In 1956, after many years of depression, Joan Ganz's father committed suicide at his home in Phoenix.

Her literary contacts, political savvy, and vast interest in the "world of ideas"—in addition to disarming self-confidence—got her hired . Her masterful organization skills and intuitive grasp of the zeitgeist of the times won her success.

While working for the U.S. Steel Hour, a colleague left to work for the educational television station WGBH-TV in Boston; her reaction was life-changing: "What?! There is educational television?!" She later stated, "I knew that I was born to be in educational television; it was St. Paul on the highway". In 1961, she began to track the progress of a court case in which public television station WNDT in New Jersey was attempting to acquire New York independent station Channel 13, which later became the precursor of PBS station WNET, the first public broadcasting station in New York. When Channel 13 became public two years later, Joan Ganz applied for a position as the station's publicist, but the general manager told her they needed producers. "I can produce", she told him, even though she had no experience in producing television shows. She later stated, "I've never been qualified for any job I've been hired for". According to television historian Cary O'Dell, Channel 13 hired her because of her ties she had made through her political activities and associations with Partisan Review. Joan Ganz later said during an interview with the Archive of American Television that the transition to becoming a documentary producer was not difficult for her because she was well-read and aware of the issues of the day, adding, "I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven, dealing with foreign policy and domestic policy and civil rights, which became the great passion in those years for me".

Taking a pay cut, she and her boss Lewis Freedman produced what author Michael Davis called "a series of teach-ins on major issues". One of her first programs was called Court of Reason, a weekly live debate show; notable guests included Malcolm X and Calvin Butts. She produced a debate show on America's policy about Cuba that aired the week before the Cuban Missile Crisis. She also produced another debate show called Poverty, Anti-Poverty, and the World, in which poor people were brought into the studio to confront the government officials responsible for developing anti-poverty programs. Although the ratings were low, Joan Ganz and Freedman won Emmys for its production, and as Davis stated, "the viewers who did tune in were serious-minded adults who cared about matters of race, injustice, and the imbalance of opportunity in New York and beyond". She also produced inexpensively-made documentaries that she later called "Little Grandma Moses documentaries" for Channel Thirteen that were well received by their viewers, including A Chance at the Beginning, which featured the precursor of Head Start that won her a local Emmy and was later used to train Head Start teachers; She later reported that Channel Thirteen had won 8 out of 13 New York Emmys in one year.

In February 1964, at age 34, she married Timothy Cooney, a staff member of New York mayor Robert Wagner, Jr.. They met while she was working on A Chance at the Beginning. He was also director of public relations for the New York City Department of Labor and director of New York's Office of Civil Defense. Timothy Cooney would eventually become "an unpaid advocate for the urban poor". Joan Cooney credited him, whom Davis called "a radical liberal", for making her into a feminist, and later said that he was very supportive and encouraging. Davis called the Cooneys "a delightfully unmatched set, a Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn two-some who married despite differences in upbringing, station, and sobriety".