55.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Farewell, dear readers
This will be my last Herald column, at least for a while. After 28 wondrous and wonderful years, I am leaving the Herald Community Newspapers on Friday. It is a bittersweet moment.
I am moving on to focus on my teaching at Hofstra University, where I will be a special assistant professor for the spring semester and begin a long-term research project. I am honored, excited and humbled — my two research partners are both Fulbright Scholars. I have taught at Hofstra for 13 years, and it is where I belong at this moment in my life.
Serving as the Heralds’ executive editor for the past five-plus years has been the honor of a lifetime, particularly over the past two, as I have had the privilege to lead an incredibly talented team of journalists, some veterans and many early-career reporters, through the coronavirus pandemic, which, thankfully, mercifully, appears to be abating.
I began with the Herald as an entry-level reporter three months after completing Peace Corps service in Bulgaria, and have remained with the company ever since. I must thank my publishers, Cliff and Stuart Richner, for all their support and kindness through the years. I must also thank so many of my colleagues, in particular Tony Bellissimo, Lori Berger, Jeff Bessen, Karen Bloom, Rhonda Glickman, Jim Harmon, Laura Lane, Jeff Lipton, John O’Connell, Tony Rifilato and Mike Smollins.
Most of all, I must thank my lovely wife, Katerina, and my two amazing (adult) kids, Alexandra and Andrew.
One of my first Herald investigative series, in the mid-1990s, was on a park that was supposed to have been built at the Five Towns Community Center in North Lawrence, but had not been. I was in the office of Jonathan Davis, then the center’s executive director, for another story when I spotted a set of blueprints on a table. Curious, I asked about them, and Davis explained that they were for a park that should have been built in the center’s back field. Nassau County had promised to construct it 20 years earlier, but never did.
Davis explained that North Lawrence, a community of color, had no real park where kids might play. I hit the local streets, talking to teenagers about the need for such a play area. The story ran on the front page and quickly caught the attention of Tom Gulotta, then the county executive. I’ll never forget the call from Dave Vieser, his press secretary, who said that Gulotta had read my stories on the lack of a park and wanted to build one at the 5TCC, which he did.
As a recently returned Peace Corps volunteer looking to do good for the world, I was hooked on this journalism thing. Many more stories — 4,000 — and investigative series — 25 — followed over the years. One series, on plans to demolish the 300-year-old Hewlett House, also in the mid-1990s, grabbed the attention of Bruce Blakeman, who was then the County Legislature’s presiding officer and is now the county executive. He had an idea to preserve the white-shingled farmhouse, on a bend in the road across the street from Hewlett High School, as a breast cancer resource center. It has been the home of 1 in 9: The Long Island Breast Cancer Action Coalition for more than two decades.
My greatest reporting challenge was a 44-part series I undertook from 2001 to 2003, examining the health and environmental threats posed by Freeport Electric’s 30-year-old Power Plant No. 2, which sits on the edge of Emory Creek in Freeport, just west of the Meadowbrook Parkway. I met some of the best people I know while reporting that story — civic activists Joe Kralovich and Bob Young, then State Sen. Charles Fuschillo and then Long Island Power Authority Chairman Richard Kessel. The lengths they went to to shut down the plant, with no pollution controls, and replace it with a modern, clean-burning natural-gas model cannot be overstated.
I run at the Town of Hempstead’s Norman J. Levy Park and Preserve in Merrick at least a couple of days a week. The plant is visible from most points on the preserve’s west side, and looking out on it, I marvel at the good that was done by a group of about 300 concerned citizens, who worked tirelessly to ensure that the diesel plant never spewed its acrid exhaust into local neighborhoods again.
At the height of the George Floyd protests in June 2020, I was covering a protest in Merrick when I shot a Twitter video of 7-year-old Wynta-Amor Rogers. Nearly instantly, it went viral, garnering more than 23 million views in seven days. I was shocked, but it showed the power of street-level reporting to connect with people worldwide.
One thing I know: Local journalism does indeed matter.
Comments about this column? SBrinton@liherald.com.
