Long Island Press dubbed ‘Best’
Fair Media Council honors Long Island publication with ‘Best Newspaper’ prize
BY LONG ISLAND PRESS
The Fair Media Council, a
Bethpage-based nonprofi t media
watchdog group, honored
the Long Island Press with
the title of Best Newspaper
at the 2020 Folio Awards,
which were held virtually
Tuesday, Sept. 22.
The judges based their
decision upon review of
the November 2019 edition of
the Press, the region’s premier
news and lifestyle publication,
which was submitted
as one of the best examples of
the monthly newspaper.
“Take me back to those
times,” Lew Leone, the vice
president and general manager
of WNYW-FOX 5, who
presented the award, joked
while recalling the pre-pandemic
holiday season in which
the issue was printed.
Retired News12 Long Island
anchor Carol Silva, who
recently announced that
she has beaten cancer, was
honored with the Lifetime
Achievement Award at the
ceremony. In addition to Best
Newspaper, three Press staffers
shared two more Folio
awards for their coverage of
local news.
“For our judging process,
we bring together about 50 distinguished
community leaders
with varied backgrounds
and interests to judge news
and social media campaigns
using a scorecard method,”
said Fair Media Council Executive
Director Jaci Clement.
“Developed with the help
of Bob Greene, the late Pulitzer
Prize-winning investigative
reporter from Newsday,
reporting news stories are
scored for relevance, quality,
originality and completeness,
which really illustrates the
storytelling and editing ability
of a newsroom grappling
with the public’s diminishing
attention span.”
Business reporter Claude
Solnik won a Folio in the
Consumer News category
for his story about local water
fi ltration sales representatives
taking advantage of
the public’s fears about the
quality of drinking water on
Long Island.
BRONX TIMES REPORTER,26 SEPT. 25-OCT. 1, 2020 BTR
Solnik’s story, “Water
Worries: Companies Selling
Costly Filters Target
Long Island,” also won a
pair of awards from the
New York Press Association
last month.
Reporter Alan Krawitz
and Editor-In-Chief Timothy
Bolger also shared a Folio
for Continuing School
Story with their work on
a series of stories about the
troubled Hempstead School
District, which has struggled
with corruption scandals,
low graduation rates, and
other issues.
In addition to those honors,
Press intern Brianna
Knibbs took home a pair of
Folio Awards for stories she
wrote as executive editor
of The Catalyst, the student
newspaper at SUNY College
at Old Westbury.
Knibbs was a Folio for
Best News Story for her story
about protest against mold in
campus dorms and Best Continuing
Coverage for her coverage
of Sean Bell’s death at
the hands of New York City
police offi cers.
Good people who live in
The Bronx and Queens...
I live in CA but my roots are in the Bronx.
My maternal grandparents lived there in the fi rst half
of the twentieth century. My mother was born there
in 1905 and lived there till 1925 when she married
my dad. She and my Immigrant grandparents were
protected by the wonderful cops of the Bronx. One
of those cops might have been John Cummings dad.
That’s why, from close to three thousand miles away,
I’m hoping you vote for John Cummings who, if elected,
will make sure that everyone in the fourteenth district
can lead peaceful, productive, pleasurable lives...no
riots, no fi res, no looting...just friendly police protection
day and night.
God bless you all,
P.J. Springer
/lives...no