By Adam Kramer
Dave Jacobs stepped to the microphone and stories of the Long Island Press, which closed 25 years ago, rolled off his tongue.
Jacobs, a former editorial writer at the 157-year-old paper, which put out its last issue on March 25, 1977, was just one of more than 60 staffers dining at the Flagship restaurant in Jamaica to recognize the silver anniversary of the broadsheet’s closing and the end of an era.
“I remember [Managing Editor Ed] Gottlieb calling up Frank Keating, the crime reporter, and telling about this big story in downtown Jamaica,” Jacobs told the group, many of whom had heard the anecdote before but listened like it was the first time. “Keating told him he did not want to write it.”
Keating told Gottlieb that if he was forced to cover the story, the cops would never give him anything again. Gottlieb did not care and ordered Keating to get the story.
Because Gottlieb was reading “The Castle” by Franz Kafka, Jacobs said, “the next day the story came out with the byline C. Castlereagh Klamm, after the book’s main character. Frank told Gottlieb the cops were running around saying who is that s– — – —– Klamm?”
Vito Turso, a reporter and now deputy commissioner of public information at the Department of Sanitation, said a quarter of a century was a “significant milestone” for a reunion of former staffers.
“Plus, in the last few years we have lost some people — Jack Peritz, an assistant city editor, and Mike Hurewitz, a reporter,” Turso said. “It felt like time to get together again and celebrate all of the memories.
“We are all part of a family only 25 years removed,” he said. “We picked up like we hadn’t missed a beat. The connection will last forever. I grew up there and learned a trade.”
Hurewitz, 57, who was a reporter at the Albany Times Union, died recently at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan from complications that developed after he donated part of his liver to his brother.
Turso started out at the paper in August 1966 as a copy boy when he was at Queens College. He said he saw an ad in the Press and applied. When he got home after the interview with Jerry Sodano, there was a message asking if he could start the next day.
Even though he worked on papers in high school and college, Turso never considered a newspaper career. “I learned a trade and said ‘whoa, I like this.’”
The Press was a training ground for journalists. A person could start out as a copy boy and work up the ladder to head copy boy, editorial assistant and then cub reporter. There are no longer places like the Long Island Press, where a person can learn the business from the bottom up, he said.
The paper, said reporter Ned Steele, was a great journalism school.
“Young reporters were schooled in the ABCs of journalism,” he said. “A lede no longer then 25 words; if it was 26 it was sent back. The editors wanted a crisp quick lede. The paper taught a lot of people the basics.”
A lede is the first paragraph of a newspaper story.
The one-time “newspaper of record” for Long Island and Queens, the Press had a combined daily and Sunday circulation of 400,000. But when it closed up shop at 168th Street in Jamaica, the Newhouse-owned paper’s circulation had dwindled to 250,000.
“I think what happened was the advertising line in the Press declined despite consumer interest,” Turso said. “Advertisers shied away from the Press and headed to Newsday, which was gaining a foothold in Queens.”
Similar to many afternoon papers, the Press was also hurt by the growing popularity of the evening news on television. Turso said people read the paper in the morning and then caught up on the day’s news by watching it on television.
The demise of the Jamaica shopping district and the city’s changing economy also hurt the paper. At one time downtown Jamaica was a thriving shopping hub with large department stores, such as Macy’s and May’s along Jamaica Boulevard. But one by one many stores began to fold, hurting the paper’s advertising base.
“I think there is a camaraderie everywhere in journalism,” Steele said. “But this place was special.”
The Press gave an identity to Queens, he said. “An identity for Queens is what matters most to the people of the borough.”
When Jimmy Breslin was fired from the Long Island Press, Jacobs said, regaling the crowd with stories about the Newsday columnist and well-known author, it was the best thing that every happened to him.
“He always used to ask us to write his college book reports and we’d tell him ‘You little bastard, you write better then us,’” he told the crowd. “And he’d say ‘Yeah, but it takes too long.’”
Reach reporter Adam Kramer by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
