14 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JULY 2021
WOMEN WIN PRESS RIGHTS PAPERGIRL POWER
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
If I had a quarter for every person who
told me they used to deliver the Long Island
Press, retirement would come early.
But it wasn’t until last year—17 years after
the Press relaunched—that the reason
the only people who’ve said that to me
were men: The owners who published
the old daily version of the newspaper
had a no-girls-allowed policy. Ironically,
now the paper is owned by a woman.
“My aunt said she wanted to deliver for
them but wasn’t allowed,” one reader told
THIS MONTH
IN LI HISTORY
me, “So they hired her brother and she
did the deliveries!”
The paper, founded 200 years ago, was
targeted by picketers for its policy. Bettye
Lane, the late, famous New York Citybased
photographer who documented
protests in the 1960s and ’70s, captured
images of some of those girls who rallied
for their right to deliver the paper.’
The photo is often shared on social media.
Lane’s nephew and archivists who
manage her photo collection said the
image was taken in October 1971, but
the photographer did not make a note of
who the girls in the photo were, so their
identities remain a mystery.
The irony of the no-girls rule under
then-owners Advance Publications—
the company that now prints the Condé
Nast magazine group—was not lost on
the Press’ current co-owner, Victoria
Schneps-Yunis, founder of Schneps
Media.
“Woman power is what I’m about,”
Schneps-Yunis said. “Doing what I do
with passion and purpose. Ironically,
now the Long Island Press has a woman
to love it and nourish it into its bicentennial
year.”
Got a story about the Long Island Press
that you’d like to share to help us celebrate
our bicentennial? Email tbolger@
longislandpress.comч
WE ARE LONG ISLAND
Unidentified girls protest the Long Island Press policy of not allowing girls to deliver the newspaper in the 1970s.
(Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute)
July 4, 1910
The Founders Monument is unveiled
in Bridgehampton to honor
residents who died in the Revolutionary
War, Civil War, and War of
1812.
July 3, 1915
Glen Cove police capture Erich
Muenter afterhe shot financier J.P.
Morgan in an attempted assination.
July 17, 1996
Paris-bound flight Trans World
Airlines (TWA) 800 explodes off the
coast of Long Island killing all 230
on board the Boeing 747.
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