16 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JUNE 2021
WE ARE LONG ISLAND
DAVID STARR
LEGENDARY LIP EDITOR
BY KARL GROSSMAN
The Long Island Daily Press started 200
years ago as the Long Island Farmer—indeed,
in 1821, Long Island was a place of
agriculture—and it ceased publication
on March 25, 1977 before the title was
revived in 2003.
It was founded by Henry C. Sleight, who
was raised in Sag Harbor.
“The Press closes, TODAY’S ISSUE IS
THE LAST,” declared the announcement
on its front page that day. “It is with
great personal sadness and regret that
we are forced to announce the closing,”
said the piece, written by the editor David
Starr. “We are proud that it has been
a good and respected newspaper that
cared about the interests of its readers.
We are proud that it has been a leader
in many campaigns to improve our
schools, to build colleges, to protect the
civil rights of citizens, to create parks,
to enhance the arts, to nurture wildlife,
to elect the best people to public office.”
That very much mirrored Starr’s views.
Starr was the editor of the Long Island
Daily Press from 1969 to 1977, managing
editor from 1962 to 1969.
He hired me as a reporter in 1964. And,
a month before the newspaper went
under, he tipped me off that it was going
down. Indeed, I only learned officially
of the demise of the newspaper driving
past The Whalebone, a store ironically
in Sag Harbor, where that last issue was
posted on its newsstand.
Starr, who died in 2019 at 96, came to the
Long Island Daily Press as a copyboy in
1939 when he was 17.
“It was the luckiest break in my life,” he
would later say.
He was hired by Norman Newhouse, a
younger brother of S.I. Newhouse, the
founder of Advance Publications.
Starr grew up in Brooklyn and Queens.
He was the youngest of eight children
of immigrants from Poland. As was
reported in an article in The Republican,
the Newhouse newspaper in
Springfield, Mass. that he went to as
publisher after The Press folded, “he
sat ‘on a little stool’ at his father’s candy
store and ‘I’d read every paper we
had…I intended to be a newspaperman
literally in the fifth grade.”
In Army intelligence in World War II,
he was in a unit which “got to arrest
the chief judge of the Austrian court
system, several mayors and high-level
Nazi bureaucrats,” noted The Republican
piece. “His biggest arrest was Pierre
Laval, the Nazi sympathizer wartime
premier of France.”
“It was an enjoyable job for a Jew from
New York City,” said Starr.
After the war, he returned to the Press
as a reporter, covering the police beat,
and became a rewrite man and copy
editor.
“Norman sort of adopted me,” said Starr.
Starr was also the national editor for
decades for all the Newhouse newspapers—
thus being one of the most
powerful editors in the U.S.
Starr hired me to cover cops-and-courts
at the Press and, in 1969, I was advanced
to writing a weekly column in its Sunday
edition and also did investigative
reporting.
A criticism of Starr through the years
was his being quite the civic booster.
As he explained in The Republican article:
“Many editors are uncomfortable
with the thought of participation. They
do not want to be—and they certainly
should not be—mere promoters. But it’s
my thesis that once an editor has examined
the problem and decided that the
proposed solution is a good one, then he
does not lose his editorial prerogative
by joining the effort.”
I corresponded with Starr in his later
years and he was delighted that in 1978,
the year after the Press folded, I began
as a professor of journalism at SUNY/
College at Old Westbury. He related how
he “worked with the Rockefeller people”
in the establishment of SUNY/Old
Westbury. Nelson Rockefeller was New
York’s governor. Starr’s involvement
in education included being a trustee
of Nassau Community College and also
the State University of New York.
In February 1977 I went to Jamaica,
where the Press was based, after months
of hearing rumors from old hands at
the newspaper, victims of the closings
of other papers, about the possibility of
it shuttering. I told Starr about what I
was hearing. I said I’d stay if the Press
were to continue. He asked me to shut
the doors of his office and asked me “not
to tell the people out there,” but it might
be wise to depart. Then, just a few weeks
later I saw that last edition.
Starr, as The Republican reported, “was
a charming man who loved newspapering,
bow ties, birdwatching, fine food,
wine, classical music, the arts and,
above all, his wife and college sweetheart,
Peggy. They were married for 76
years.” She passed away last year.
Got a story about the Long Island Press
that you’d like to share to help us celebrate
our bicentennial? Email tbolger@
longislandpress.com
“It was the luckiest break in my life,” David Starr said
of being hired by the Press.
David Starr.
THIS MONTH
IN LI HISTORY
June 24, 1896
Adelphi University was founded in
Garden City.
June 25, 1961
Mitchel Air Force Base, which was
used during both World War I and
World War II, was officially closed
and given to Nassau County for
redevelopment in the area that now
includes Nassau Veterans Memorial
Coliseum.
June 15, 2000
The Long Island Aquarium opened
in Riverhead.
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