12 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • AUGUST 2021
BYGONE BYLINES
LIP LEGENDS REMEMBERED
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
In the two centuries since this newspaper
was founded, the bylines of
more writers than we can count have
appeared in its pages — but some big
names may surprise modern readers.
The byline of Washington Irving, best
known for writing Halloween classic
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, has
appeared in early iterations of the publication
before he died in 1859. Beloved
late Long Island columnist Ed Lowe
wrote for the Press for a time in the
early 2000s. And Jimmy Breslin, the late
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, got
his first job in the newspaper industry
at age 14 as a copy boy at the Long Island
Press in the 1940s.
“Newspapers were a product of nervous
energy back then,” he wrote, Politico
recalled. “The city rooms were filled
with noise, typewriters and smoke
throughout the joint. It was horrible,
terrible and unhealthy. Now they have
computers that can do wondrous things,
and everybody sits at them and quietly
bores the world.”
The Press is reflecting on those days as
it marked the bicentennial of the 1821
founding of the Long Island Farmer,
which later became the Long Island
Press.
Among the daily Press reporters still in
the media today is Karl Grossman, the
dean of LI print journalism, who won
the coveted George Polk Award for his
Press reporting on sand mine excavation,
and went on to found the Press
Club of Long Island, the local chapter of
the Society of Professional Journalists.
“The Levon Corporation was excavating
a square mile of the bluff-fronted north
shore at Jamesport on the North Fork
under the guise of building a deep-water
port,” Grossman, who is pressing on
after a half century in the business, told
PCLI. “In fact, it was a huge sand mine,
a massive rape of Long Island. The sand
was being barged off to Connecticut to
make concrete for interstate highways
being built there. The scheme was
stopped. The land is now a state park.”
Big names have come through this
newsroom in more recent years as
well. Two who’ve made an impact this
year are Lauren Wolfe, a foreign correspondent
who founded Women Under
Siege, a project that documents and
investigates gendered/sexualized violence
in conflicts around the world, and
Billy Jensen, an investigative journalist
whose latest Unraveled podcast about
the unsolved Long Island Serial Killer
case inspired a New York State senator
to publicly demand police release an
update on the probe.
What big names may grace these pages
next? Stay tuned.
Got a story about the Long Island Press
that you’d like to share to help us celebrate
our bicentennial? Email tbolger@
longislandpress.com
WE ARE LONG ISLAND
THIS MONTH
IN LI HISTORY
August 18, 1829
Fourteen men organized the Sag
Harbor Temperance Society, one
of the first temperance societies on
Long Island, which fought to halt the
sale of alcohol on the Sag Harbor
waterfront.
August of 1931
The Artemis, a ship that carried
prohibited liquor, hit a patrol boat
and was shot at off Orient Point.
August 26, 1995
A fire centered near Westhampton
scorches over 5,000 acres, becoming
New York state’s worst fire in nearly
a century.
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