Long Island Reporters Reminiscing

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.

Sit back and learn how some of Long Island's biggest stories turned into news headlines, as told by the journalists who covered them. I'm Jaci Clement, CEO and Executive Director of the Fair Media Council. This discussion was part of FMC's annual event, The News Conference: Real and Powerful. Featured in this session are Michael Dell Giudice, news photojournalist and editor, WNBC New York; Jennifer McLogan, Long Island reporter, CBS New York; Terry Sheridan, Senior Director of News and Education, WSHU Public Radio, and Bob Keeler, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, formerly with Newsday and now retired. Moderating is Chris Wright of Protivity Consulting and a member of the Fair Media Council Board of Directors. Now take a listen as Bob Keeler opens this session telling of one of his more memorable stories.

One other Long Island story that I— that people will be familiar with is The Amityville Horror. So Ronald DeFeo murdered his parents and 4 siblings. And many years later, I interviewed him at Attica. That was my 3rd time at Attica. The first time was on the day of the state troopers firing into the facility and killing 43 people. And later I interviewed David Berkowitz, the serial killer who was known as the Son of Sam. But I interviewed DeFeo because it became known that he wanted to tell a different story. He told a different story. I didn't really believe it, but I, I wrote a story about it in the paper. And in later times, I actually was visiting someone in prison, and I got up to go to the vending machines, and I bumped into the guy behind me. Turned out it was Ronald DeFeo, and I was a little nervous because I knew he didn't like the story I wrote about him. Anyway, DeFeo died last year and kind of all brought it back for me. One last thing. This was not a specifically Long Island story, but it's a story that meant a lot to me, because I certainly would not have gotten to Rome without it, and I wouldn't have gotten to sit right next to the Pope and the Chief Rabbi of Rome. So it was the first ever Yom HaShoah concert, the Holocaust Memorial Concert.

Thank you.

in 1994. And Newsday decided that they wanted me to cover it. And so I went. Happily for me, I went with Father Tom Hartmann. You remember Father Tom Hartmann from the God Squad.

Yes.

And Father Tom Hartmann and I flew on the plane together. And when we got there, some little guy picked us up at the airport, took us right to the Vatican because he was wanting Tom Hartmann to make a documentary about Padre Pio. Anyway, when I got there, Roger Tillis of the Tillis Center handed me my tickets. And, you know, that was what enabled me to be there. Roger was the main fundraiser for that concert. So that was the sort of Long Island angles on international story that, you know, meant a lot to me to cover. Okay, I think I should shut up now.

It sounds like there's more.

Bob, just Father Tom was, before he was on television, the youth group leader at the parish to which I and Others went as teenagers. Good man going back to the '70s.

Yeah, he was a very good guy. Yeah, very good guy. And I remember he slept like a baby on that plane. I could never sleep on a plane. He was completely at home with himself.

There are people who can't sleep on a plane and people who can't stay awake. I'm on the can't stay awake side. And hopefully your time with DeFeo and Berkowitz was supervised.

Yeah. Well, Berkowitz— one funny story about Berkowitz. So I'm sitting there with reporters from the AP and the New York Times. And we asked him, why did you want to give us this interview? Why did you want to talk to us? He wanted to say that it wasn't a dog who told him to kill people. So he said, because you're the respectable tabloids. And I said to myself, oh my God, the guy from the Times might want to kill himself for being called a tabloid. So later, when I wrote a worst-selling book about the history of Newsday, and we were casting around for a title, we came up with Newsday: The History of the Respectable Tabloid.

Isn't that an oxymoronic term? Yeah.

Can you be—

can you be both?

Yeah.

Well, there was a guy at the Daily News who used to call Newsday a tabloid in a tutu, because we were tabloid in shape, but not in spirit. We didn't have the kind of gutsy headlines and stuff that the Daily News and the Post do.

Somewhere I still have my Master Carrier sweatshirt from 1980.

Okay.

Thank you for that. Thank you for the service. Thank you for your service, as they say.

Mr. Bordash was the Director of Circulation, if I recall.

Vinnie Bordash, yeah.

Vinnie Bordash, yeah. Well, that's great, Bob. Thank you. And so you covered a bit of touching, a bit of surprising, and certainly some pretty, pretty big stories. Um, maybe Terry, from a radio perspective before, and we'll ask Michael and Jennifer on television perspective, but anything you've covered either in your current or present or prior, uh, prior roles?

Well, I mean, I'm speaking now in capacity as an editor and a newsroom leader, you know, that I wasn't personally, you know, covering stories, but I was guiding stories. One of the things that we did this year was investigations into the Nassau County Police Department for misconduct, and a lot of it was data-driven. My reporter Charles Lane was just you know, foiling, foiling, foiling, looking at datasets, et cetera. But what made the story special was something that something Bob stepped on or touched on, was that the stories became powerful when we spoke to people who were directly affected by anything that happened, whether it was a misguided internal affairs investigation, whether it was someone who was unfairly arrested, whether it was someone who suffered worse at the hands of the police. So again, it's yes, the story, we have to get the data, We have to get that right. But in order to make it more powerful, in order to make it that people want to read it or care about it so that they don't get the condition called MEGO, which is my eyes glaze over, you want to get someone who was affected to tell their story. So, you know, that was one of the things that we did this year. And then I think this year too, the Thomas Valva case, that, yes, a horrible crime. But I think the thing that got reporters and editors is when you're looking at what is happening or what happened, And hearing about it, and you have to have a heart of stone not to be affected by it in some way, shape, or form. So it's those stories that we we try to do that you know one factually based, heavily reported, but we're looking for a human hook. One of the stories I guess in my career, and this was about twenty years ago, there was a horrible fire in out in Coney Island, and it was just speaking to a witness, and and someone just said, you know. They were screaming from the 4th floor, and then all of a sudden the screaming stopped, and you knew right away what, what he was trying to say. But again, it's that human touch that, that makes the stories more powerful.

Sure, I'd like to step in also. Um, thanks for having us. I'm trying to turn off my morning meeting unsuccessfully. I'll get that off in a second here. Sorry, off to the left. And Terry and I, of course, in inner circle together. Doing our thing. Anyway, welcome to everybody here watching and listening, and thanks for having us. When I first came back from network news to local news, excuse me, I I had been back for a couple of weeks when the LIRR massacre occurred, and I happened to live in Garden City. I was a new transplant here with my husband and three young children, and My husband was on the phone, and in those days we had no cell phones. We had no way of— we had a beeper maybe, but that's about it. And suddenly there's a call waiting kind of thing, and the message comes in, please pick up the phone. It was an editor at CBS. Is there a mass shooting in your community? And they put me on the phone. I'm looking around. No, I mean, what are you talking about? The railroad? And I said, well, it's down the street. I don't see anything. Go take a look. We have someone on the train from CBS that says there's a mass shooting. So that was my initiation, just walking down the street into this unbelievable kind of a bloodbath. And as I'm getting there, all the ambulances are arriving. And, um, I walked back to the house to get some kind of a little camcorder, and I stood there just shooting In a delirious fashion, filled with horror and sadness at what was evolving around us. And our cameraman, Nick Fisher, then arrived to be the first one on the scene. And we, I believe, interrupted the Dan Rather evening news and just started going live for the rest of the night, finding out that some of my neighbors— New neighbors. And People in our community, obviously so affected. I followed that story for weeks through the trials, and then Colin Ferguson being his own attorney, when going into the jail to try to interview him. And at one point, sitting there to interview Colin Ferguson, in the jail, and I looked off to the right, and there was Joel Rifkin and his mother having also a talk, you know, right by here. And Joel Rifkin was the serial killer that had been murdering all the women. So it was very ironic that that was happening at the same time. Following the trial, of course, Carolyn McCarthy evolves and becomes— runs for Congress and wins. And we were on the plane with her when she went to Washington, days of old, to be sworn sworn in, similar to what George Santos is— why we're following George Santos today, a different age then. And there was cooperation, respect, and both sides of the aisle getting autographs from Carolyn McCarthy at that point. It just shows how a story will have legs. A couple of other stories that reminded us of the importance of our desk. Um, one night we got a call from a woman who was very grief-stricken and crying to the desk, please send a reporter to my house because my husband, my ex-husband, has murdered my child. And we're, what is going on? And we got there, cameraman and I, and it was, um, Justina Zubko-Valva. And we went in to speak to her and she said, my husband is a police officer. I know he he's guilty of this. And we couldn't air that because first of all, he had not been arrested. And right then the news came out that the child was injured and had died of natural causes. So we had to hold on to that interview. And then 3 days later, he was arrested. And then we got to, to play that and follow that beginning from soup to nuts all the way through. And We were there 2 months ago when the father was found guilty. And the jury so upset and speaking to us afterward. One other story, and then I'll let someone else take over, that we happened to be in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time. We were in Quogue and got word that something strange had happened on the horizon and People were calling out, we think a plane's gone down, and it was TWA Flight 800. So my crew and I rushed to Mariches, which is where they sent us originally that night, and we just reported all through the night of the plane. It was just such a horrible, horrible, sad situation. And then we were on Dune Road at the end by the Coast Guard station for almost 6 weeks. night and day reporting that story. And then of course Nelson DeMille had his famous book on Was It Terrorism? So that story continues to today also.

Great, Jennifer. And you've, uh, you remind me that, uh, the Maryland Avenue Massacre, I think, redefines Pearl Harbor Day for Long Islanders, right? It's another December 7th event. And I have some personal friends who were EMTs on the scene that day, you know, doing God's work with the wounded. And it's always important to reach out, kind of reach out to them on how they're doing on that day. It is a pretty seminal event for that community.

Yes, and one of the neighbors was Japanese American, and he told me later he was wounded But not gravely, that he thought that he was being attacked because of his ethnicity. And just a reminder of that day, it was a special day because we went to Farmingdale Airport to do the flyover with the old-timers in the flight, so to drop the roses at the Statue of Liberty. My crew and I were in an old plane and it lost its altimeter or something, and we had to make an emergency landing in New Jersey. And then I remember getting driven all the way back to Long Island and then getting home and then having this happen a couple hours later. It was a whole horrible day.

And I think the Valva case that the two of you have mentioned now as well, that resonates, and particularly, you know, for those of us who have autistic children in the family too. You know, it does, it touches a lot of nerves, but I think provides a lot of focus to more than the issue at hand. It's a multi-issue tragedy, crime, horror, right? I think it got the coverage it deserved, in my view. Not that I'm supposed to opine in this role, but I just did.

Good point.

And Michael, I want to move on to you as well. I know you've got some views and some stories to reflect on as well.

Well, it's funny, Jen, that you would mention the Maryland, you know, LIRR massacre, because I was out in San Francisco. I've been doing this for now it's 38 years. I had been at News 12 for 7 or 8 years and moved out to San Francisco in the early '90s. And the day that happened, I was in the Bay Bridge in San Francisco had a major, major spill. And you want to talk about something that the the city was at a standstill. I mean, it was huge, and and it was huge national news because it literally brought the city to its knees, and. So I'm sitting in traffic trying to get from one place to another. I'm working, I'm working for KTVU, the Fox affiliate in San Francisco, and trying to get from one place to another. And all of a sudden, later in the afternoon, and granted it's 3 hours difference, I hear about the story and I'm like, oh, and immediately I think of the crews that I worked with and what was going on in their heads and and what they were dealing with. And I, you know, I I tried to get to a phone eventually and find out what was going on. I think I talked to Doug Geed, my buddy, and it was a an unbelievable story that I wasn't a part of. But I know how big that obviously was. I eventually got back to New York within a year or so and was part of the trial. So I was, you know, I was a part of it in the long run. But I know that day, the adrenaline and what's going through your mind and going through newsrooms and how to attack this type of story is just—

It's incredible.

It's funny because I was looking at some of the stories I've covered over the years. And we're talking about Flight 800. I go as far back as Avianca in 1990, that horrible plane crash that was literally in the backyard of News 12, the Buttafuoco situation. But it's funny that One of the big stories I had been a part of was the Sunrise wildfires. I happened to be covering the East End that day. I usually worked with Doug Geed. He was anchoring in the main station, and I was out there with another reporter, and we were wrapping up our day, heading back to the state— back to our bureau. And, um, I don't know if you guys remember, maybe a week or so prior, there were some pretty bad wildfires up in, uh, I think it was Rocky Point, Miller Place. And when we went to, uh, go check this out, I saw it off in the distance. I'm like, I don't think we're heading back to the Bureau. Let's go, let's go check this out. Um, we ran into some firefighters that were starting to um, realize how big this was starting to become, they had said to me, this is making the Rocky Point, um, wildfires, um, look like, you know, nothing. And that scared the crap out of me, um, scared both of us. Um, and so we— back then, the only way we could send anything was from some Either a live truck, which I did not have, or, um, or back in the bureau we were able to feed stuff back. Um, but the video that I was shooting at that time wasn't— I couldn't get it back to the station. We were maybe 10 minutes from the bureau. I make my way back and I shot as I shot extra with the thought that this could be Bigger than just a small wild, a small fire. So I get back there, and I never make calls like this. I never stick my neck out in this type of situation. I you know have a job to do, and I do it. But I said to the powers that be, including Pat Dolan, I said this. I I'm sending back a lot of video because I think this might be something you're going to be covering for a while. And, um, uh, Pat and others said that was probably one of the best calls, uh, we've made because, um, when things started heating up, they sound— uh, they wound up sending, um, trucks. Every live truck they possibly had started heading out. And we met up with different trucks, whatever. The bottom line was it became one of the biggest wildfires we've ever covered here on Long Island. But it's, it's funny, I was talking with Jackie before this, Jackie Clement, and I said I was, I was going through a list of different stories that Richard Angelo, Angel of Death, all these types of stories. But the one that hits me the most is not a huge event. It's something we covered throughout the years at News 12 that after a couple of years, I had said to Pat Dolan, I said, hey, Pat, is this okay that we're going to continue to cover this year after year? And he said, I truly believe, and it sticks with me forever. He said, I truly believe this story, and I'll tell you in a second, is woven into the fabric of our station. It's called the Ride for Life. I don't know if you guys are familiar with it. It was Chris Pendergast. He had ALS. Greg Sergel had asked me, hey, why don't we go cover this story? I think it could be something heartfelt. And this man was told he had anywhere from 2 to 3 years to live. He wound up— you want to talk about perseverance? He wound up living for—

20 years.

Another 28 years with the disease. Um, and he did so much. Millions and millions of dollars, uh, were raised through the years of this Ride for Life. And it really is something that, uh, uh, will always be near and dear to me. So, um, yeah, I don't want to take up too much time, you know.

But, um, Michael, and, and maybe, uh, Jennifer as well, was that before With the, the wildfire, I, I, one thing I remember is that the first time I'd heard the term stump jumper. I think that's now, that's now the name of a type of fire truck that's associated with Long Island response to the wildfire, right? The stump jumper.

That's correct. It's funny you should say that, Chris. I, I got onto a stump jumper, uh, that, that next morning, and they were battling it and battling it. It's so funny you should mention this because I get on this and I, you know, they garb me up. I'm with a reporter, uh, we're out in the middle of it, and we got pretty close. I mean, so close that, um, I had some, some embers had come and, and burnt my, my, um, part of my shirt that wasn't closed with the jacket. Oh my God. And so I— we get back and we do a live shot, and I know my mother at the time is watching. And my reporter said, oh, and my photographer Mike Del Giudice was burned while we were out there. And I'm like, oh my goodness. As soon as we were done, I immediately called my mom because I knew she would be like Are you okay? Oh my goodness. That's how close these sump jumpers got to the fires. And I don't know if it's careless that we went out with them. I, you know, we got amazing video and we got— it was something where we felt it was necessary to show what these firefighters were doing and how hard they were working and battling this fire. So, so yes, uh, the sump jumper was something that, um, Was a big part of battling that fire.

And is that why, or because, or after— you know, I worked in Melville for 20 years and still pass by there a lot. There was sort of a gas station on the corner of Pinelawn and 110 that would— that had all these live trucks almost situated for a number of news organizations, had live trucks parked at this gas station, I guess, ready to deploy. Was Is, is the— is that the way people resp— did they learn from Long Island wildfires and add those there, or were those always kind of—

Well, it is a good location.

No, that's where we park.

Yes.

Yeah.

We, we are still parked there.

We park at that gas station, or they park at the, um, at their houses. We still have that.

It's almost like—

is there a case—

is there a ready-go playbook for all hell's breaking loose and I need to be on the scene? You know, Michael, you had to get out to a wildfire. Jennifer, you happened to be able to walk up the street or a few blocks over to Maryland Avenue. What, how do you, and this is for everybody, how do you scramble to the scene when it's, you know, you're in the middle of a fire or the immediate aftermath of a mass murder? Like, mass murder, what, how do you, what's, is there a checklist or is it like, what's the, what are the steps that get you from, I just heard about this, to reporting either live or writing the story?

Well, I just think that It's completely different now. I mean, we can go live anywhere in this kitchen with like a little tiny whatever. Back then, and Mike Del Giudice explained this, you have to be with the crew. You could, you could go off separately or meet in your own cars, but you have to be together to shoot the video to try to get the story on the air. We were with the Quogue Fire Department then with their stump jumper and We knew some of the firefighters there going through, but we couldn't get the video on the air. We had to drive to a feed point in Manorville. Remember that hill, Mike?

Yes.

Drive this live truck all the way up to this hill, raise the mast, and then they could see you in New York City. So we would lose like 45 minutes. Um, and, and I remember people at the Fair Media Council were saying, why are you dropping off the air suddenly? We'd say, because we have to drive to speed point and feed it in and then do a live shot. Over my shoulder is the smoke. We were just— why aren't you standing in the smoke? Because you couldn't get a signal out. And it's very frustrating. Well, now there's live view, and Mike can explain how now we can go live anywhere. But back then you were tethered to this truck and microwave.

Oh, I know.

From the way—

I'm sorry, just very quickly, that's why I was so lucky in the sense that our bureau We had a bureau that I could actually feed video out of, was only about 5-10 minutes away. Um, we didn't have to go to, uh, that— the Hill, um, which was something we did before the bureau all the time. So yes, I'm sorry, Terry.

No, I was going to say, now from a radio point of view, it was just get there any way you can as fast as you can, and then while you're getting to a scene You're trying to figure out the different logistics, how to enter it. I mean, when you don't— I was driving a personal car. So even though I had NYPD plates, I didn't have any real identification besides my credential to get into a scene. So a lot of times, all right, how do I get there? How do I negotiate with the police officer who is guarding the scene to get access? Where should my car be pointed out? And then early on, it was like, where can I get a cell signal? You know, to do live reports. So at first, it's just get there, get to the area, and then once you're there, figure out some logistics so that you can get into the scene and start reporting.

This is making me feel a little, uh, I don't know, nervous or whatever, because, uh, you know, my technology was a notepad. And, uh, so we didn't— the thing about Newsday was it was a PM newspaper for most of the time. My earlier years at Newsday. So the presses didn't begin to run until the following morning. So that gave us a lot of time. I mean, you had to get to a scene if it was something, some kind of breaking story, but it gave you the opportunity to spend time doing further reporting and being able to, you know, get the story as good, as right as you can get it. So in that sense, I was glad I was in that line of work because I I have a very obsessive personality. And if I had to be in TV or radio journalism, where I had to worry about the masts and the broadcast place and where we park our truck and how we get there in time, I probably would have ended up in a private suite at Pilgrim Psychiatric Center. I'm just happy that I was in the newspaper business and I had the opportunity to— I used to enjoy when I was the Albany bureau chief, next door to the New York Times. So I had to compete with the New York Times every day. They were a morning newspaper. So, you know, nothing happens in Albany before about 8 o'clock at night. So 8 o'clock at night, they're just revving up. So the Times has to run an early edition story saying the legislature is thinking about beginning to contemplate maybe later on doing something. That will be their first edition story. Their second edition story was the legislature moved a little bit further closer to the Meanwhile, I'm sitting here all night gathering stuff. So, you know, slow and steady wins the race is what I like to think about in terms of journalism, being able to spend the extra time. One last thing I wanted to comment on, something that Jen said about TWA 800. When that happened, I happened to be in Italy. We had flown over. Newsday sent me to write about Assisi. And so I'd flown over. My daughter had just graduated from college. I took her. Newsday paid for me. I paid for my daughter. So I went to France and then on to Italy. And I learned about the TWA 800 flight.

Yeah.

What happened in the interim was people knew that I was going, that we were going to France and we were taking a flight that had gone around the same time, a day or so earlier. So people were calling my wife and just saying, how's Bob? In their mind, they're wondering if I'm at the bottom of the ocean. Anyway, I learned about this in Italy, and so I called Newsday because my friend Matt Cox, after the closing of New York Newsday, he ended up on the copy desk, which is, you know, not a great place for him to be as a reporter. So I called Newsday and said, you know, he wrote a book about the Lockerbie case, and you should have him on the team to cover this TWA 800 flight disaster. And they had already begun to think of that in that terms. And Matt did get on that team, and Newsday won a Pulitzer for their coverage of that event. So that's what I think of when I think of TWA 800 being on the other side of the pond.

You mentioned Lockerbie. It used to be old news, right? But I recall, I think it was right before Christmas, there was— it actually Right. Right? I mean, that's 34, 35 years ago, and they're— they've, they've just now cracked one of the cases. That, that seems like it was a minor story, I guess, but, uh, there was a lot of— there were a number of Long Islanders on that plane, if I recall correctly, too, and because of the point of origin. So when you're, when you're thinking about— and we covered kind of how do you deal with the breaking news and the scramble— I assume if you're fortunate enough to be in a car with somebody else driving, you're probably actively writing or reporting or preparing en route so that you hop out of the car. It's not like it is in the movies where they hop out of the car and they're live, right? I'm sure there's steps in between. But when it's not breaking news, I'm wondering if any of you can reflect on, without revealing sources, but whether, you know, with some of the big stories you've covered, were there Is there, you know, one where it was sort of a good source where you felt like you were served well by a, you know, a tip or a source or a call that got you? You know, I think, thinking, Bob, you know, you mentioned you got the call that you wouldn't ordinarily have gone to Bayshore at 4 in the morning to see about how long the line at DSS was. Are there any stories where the, you know, there's— you still have a connection to either the source of the story or the people involved, you know, to this day, or whether, whether there's any, any ongoing relationships like that. Again, I'm not sure.

I did have a tip from someone within the Roslyn School District that something bad was going on with money management, and that led us into the Roslyn embezzlement story, and we stayed on that for several weeks. But if it weren't for that source, I would have just been following everybody else.

And became a movie, right? Hugh Jackman?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

But by the way, I'm not sure that was an actor that looked a lot like the character.

I was going to say, that was the weirdest piece of casting I ever saw.

Right.

I knew Frank Tassone, who was the guy who was doing the embezzling. I knew him when he was the president of the Dickens Fellowship. My wife and I used to go into Manhattan on Charles Dickens' birthday and at Christmas time. And this group of old fuddy-duddies like myself who was interested in Charles Dickens would, you know, gather, and he became the president of it. And I thought he was so boring that dust came out of his mouth when he spoke. And, you know, there's no way in the world I would have ever imagined him being at the heart of an embezzlement scandal or being played by Hugh Jackman.

Right.

What kind of casting is that? Who, who would— who should play you, Ken, in that? In that film if they had thrown you in there.

Um, can you imagine? Because he's about 5 feet tall and Hugh Jackman is about 6 foot 8 or something. Yeah, yeah, it's a completely different situation. Yeah.

You know, on Rosalind, there was a lingering aftereffect in the business community that went on for some years. The, the audit firm— and I forget their name and wouldn't mention them if I knew it— um, that audited Rosalind apparently audited of the 125 school districts on Long Island, which is a whole other story, maybe half or many, many. And every one of those school districts between whenever that was and June 30th of the following year had to get a new auditor. And so you wouldn't have thought that it would've put the accounting industry into a bit of a stir, but that's 100 or so school districts, maybe 70 of them needed to have their books looked at just in case, right? The, the knock-on effect was, well, let's make sure we don't have that too.

And then of course we have to have our books looked at with Mr. Mangano and Mr. Spota. It's pretty ironic.

I serve as a volunteer on the Nassau Interim Finance Authority. I'm familiar with the latter, with the former case.

I have to plead guilty to being an unindicted co-conspirator in this situation. Because I wrote the Newsday endorsement editorial endorsing Tom Spota when he first ran. And we, you know, we were not too happy with Jimmy Katis and his predecessor. So— Well, I remember Rich Shafer, the Democratic leader, accompanying Spota into the Newsday offices. Spota had been a Republican turned Democrat. We were always a little nervous about him because he You know, he seemed too close to the cops. He defended cops a lot, you know. So then, you know, what happened happened. But then Steve, if you remember, Steve Ballone, the county executive, showed up outside Spota's office, kind of like Martin Luther with the 95 Theses and criticizing him. But I, you know, I recall that Steve Ballone— I also wrote the endorsement editorial for Steve Ballone when he first ran for county executive. Mostly because of his treatment of Wyandanch. He was very concerned about Wyandanch, and we thought that was good. But he comes into a meeting of us reporters, editors, and I was representing the editorial board, and he announced that he was going to make Jimmy Burke his chief of department. Now, by that time, I had heard from this former New York City detective a lot about Jimmy Burke, including his hobbies. in his proclivities. So I didn't mention that in the meeting, but I did say to Steve Ballone, Steve, don't you think it's weird management to be appointing the chief of department, the highest uniformed officer, before you appoint the police commissioner, who was his boss? And Steve said, whoever the police commissioner turns out to be, he's going to have to follow Jimmy Burke's policing ideas. And of course, Jimmy Burke's policing ideas turned out to be pretty bad, like beating up suspects in the precinct. By the way, let me just put in a little bit of a plug here for a book about this, Jimmy the King by Gus Garcia Roberts. It's a book about this whole affair. And it's very well done, just massively reported. And it's well worth the read because it gives you a sense of the corruption that went on. in the Suffolk County Police Department, and the way in which Spota and others covered for Jimmy Burke, who was a nasty character and still is a nasty character.

I'm very interested in that. Yeah. And the Nelson DeMille too, with The Maze, obviously fictionalized, but that's pretty horrifying also.

And wasn't Bob—

this is not a conspiracy theory, but I mean, I'll admit I'm an accounting major. I was an accounting major with a minor in history. I do memorize things that would be Jeopardy categories that nobody would care about. But in this instance, wasn't Jimmy Burke as a youngster also on the scene in the Quartararo-Pius case?

Yeah, he was. That's how he and Tom Spota got to know each other. This Suffolk County cop, you know, who was calling me— the reason he was calling me, a Nassau County, New York City cop who kept calling me about this stuff. It was because his son-in-law, who had been a Suffolk County cop, was convicted of helping some burglary ring. And this New York City detective held it against Suffolk County cops and the DA's office that, that they did that to his son-in-law. So that's why he started feeding me stuff about Jimmy Burke. And he had some outrageous theories about Burke and the, and the Pius killing. But that's how they first got to know each other, because Jimmy Burke lived in that neck of the woods. and cooperated, gave some testimony to the investigation. It's all in Gus Garcia Roberts's book, which is really a good book.

You know, and these are all— we can't talk about Long Island and miss the story that everyone's talking about. We talked about a number of stories that are Long Island, you know, Avianca Flight 800, the Maryland Avenue Massacre, the Amityville Horror. They're all Long Island-based stories that were really national news. How about my new congressman?

Oh.

They redistricted me, right? And I thought, wow, I'm finally gonna— and no, here we are. I'm a mile north of the southern state, right? And so any views from all, I would appreciate, on whether you think this will or has or should, you know, help support the idea that local news needs to be local and really probing and and insightful. And I'll ask— this is a question for everybody, starting with whoever's mic's off first.

So, well, you know, Newsday is getting blamed for this, so I feel like I should speak about it. There were several stories about this. One was in The Nation and another was in The Washington Post. The story in The Nation sort of credited Mark Cesano, who's a member of the Newsday editorial board and a very good guy, for talking about this stuff before the election. There was a lot of criticism of the New York Times. And I'm always happy to hear criticism of the New York Times, having competed against them for many years. I give them an extra initial in their name, the NYFT. And they were criticized for sitting on this or not getting it into the paper until after the election. I don't know whether— how much they knew about it in advance or whatever. So I think part of it is the whole depletion of journalism. This, this little tiny paper on the North Shore got— and it's a Republican-leaning paper— got the story out. Newsday didn't get it out to the extent that Newsday has been capable of getting it out in the past. So, you know, I'm just happy that I wasn't there as the ombudsman. Years ago, they asked me to be the ombudsman at Newsday, which is a job where if you walk down the hallway and say good morning to somebody and you're the ombudsman, they say, what did he mean by that? Is he investigating me now? So I'd have— if I were the ombudsman, I'd have to be writing about this. What, you know, what did Newsday do wrong? What did Newsday do right? And it would be making people throughout the building hate me. So I'm just happy not to be there for this. But the depletion of local journalism is something we all should be concerned about. And this may very well be a very good example of that.

In fact, the owner of that— the owner or publisher of that paper, Bob, was not just Republican-leaning, he was the Republican nominee in that seat. Twice.

Yes, he was.

Yeah, Lally. And then, you know, TV, we have our— we take the blame too. The depletion of local journalism, maybe in the olden days we would have had a reporter assigned to maybe each district or candidate. We did an overall Republican, an overall Democrat. We did— I did a certain race and it wasn't that race. one of our city reporters did that race from a totally different standpoint that both men were gay running against each other in newly, you know, designated—

Part of it's in Queens, so he connected it.

Yeah, and then, yeah, in Queens and then, and then Nassau. And what did all this mean? And did the Democrats blow it by causing this redistricting in the first place? And we sort of went from that angle and then talked to them. And of course, the next morning I'm interviewing George Santos and spoke to him quite a bit. You know, not necessarily— it was my second time around interviewing him after he lost to Tom Suozzi 2 years prior. I went over to Larry Levy at Hofstra that afternoon, and he said, Look, there's so many things that we shouldn't do— victim shaming when you didn't get what you wanted in hindsight to get. But you, in a race like this, you just look at somebody's bio. Are you going to question he went to Baruch College? Are you going to start calling Baruch? It just, it wasn't something that jumped out until, you know, maybe if we'd interviewed him in person and, and learned more about Brazil and more about his Yeah, I wasn't looking for anybody to be any self-flagellation, or it was more, did you think it's changed things?

And I think you raised one example. Maybe there will be a quick call to everybody's claimed college.

Yep.

And having, having gotten some higher education recently in my life, I would go with the last one they went to because that college did all the work for you on whether they went to the other colleges. Go to the highest one. They already got transcripts anyway.

And I would say too, you know, it's one of these things, and Jennifer touched on it, do you start checking everyone's resume? I mean, I think the totality of the lies is what's so breathtaking. Because yes, someone might fudge this or fudge that, but when you fudge an entire life, you know, it's something— do you think, wow, I need to check every fact on this? You know, was he the descendant of Holocaust survivors? Was he Jewish? Was he, um, you know, How is he in Brazil? Was he Black? You know, when you start adding things up and looking in the rearview mirror, you say, God, how did we miss all these different warning signs? And also, there was always talk, and this is, and again, self-flagellation, shame on us. There was always talk that there was something off about, about him, that things didn't add up. I don't think we could understand the totality of how things didn't add up. But yeah, no, maybe we should have checked further. Maybe we should have checked his business. And it's also going to be a story that's going to continue to go because now we have, we have this morning's event. And then, you know, there are going to be investigations into the financing.

Yeah, there's a— he was possibly also perhaps ignorable because he had lost by 40,000 votes in the previous election.

Yeah.

And you could have—

right.

The other interesting part of this is, you know, and I like Tom Suozzi, you know, I think he's a good guy. But we wouldn't have George Santos if Tom Suozzi had not decided to make this chimerical primary run for governor. He had lost a primary run for governor in the past. So, you know, people I know tried to dissuade him from doing this. And so, you know, if he beat Santos by that much, even in a redistricted district, The likelihood is he would've beaten him this time around, and Santos would've continued to wallow in the obscurity that he so richly deserves. But the good thing that came out of all this is the, the Richie Torres proposed legislation, which I'm a big fan of acronyms.

So it's the Santos Bill.

Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker, or Santos Act.

Yes.

This came out of the GAO, the Government Acronym Office.

Yeah.

We have these people coming 24/7 thinking of these acronyms. But I think that the end of it's going to be when he and Bolsonaro both get sent back to Brazil together.

So that's your prediction?

Yeah.

Cool.

A package deal.

Chris?

Yes, Mike.

At the TV level, and Jen and I think probably can vouch for this, There's such an emergence of so many platforms that we are dealing with now that, um, and so there are fewer— there are more jobs for fewer people, especially in our business. And so the thought of doing some type of an investigative type, uh, of piece for what seems to be almost like day-of-air type stuff. is overwhelming. And I do not want to make excuses, but I think I probably am. But it's so overwhelming, the amount of work that reporters, MMJs, if you're familiar with the term MMJs, they do literally everything. They're multimedia journalists.

Yep.

And then on our, you know, a photographer, I'm shooting, editing, live. It's overwhelming the amount of stuff we're doing. So, um, what, you know, Jen was saying before, uh, yes, was something maybe off? Did something seem a little bit off? But were we supposed to be like, wait a minute, did you— are you sure you went to Baruch? You know, are you sure you went to this college?

Are you sure?

Like, it— Yes, maybe in another time we might have. But the amount of things that are on our plate lessen the possibility of digging that much on daily pieces. Bob, you were talking earlier about, you know, if you had to deal with the— all the live stuff and all that. I do that. to be able to do the projects. I enjoy doing those extended project-type pieces, but my job is also to do those, the things that get things on the air on a daily basis. I kind of always say throughout the years, I do this stuff, press conferences and the daily stuff or whatever, to be able to get into the other stuff and to be able to really dive in. But on a daily basis, stories like that, it's funny because I covered him. I covered both of them to the day of the election. I got an interesting vibe, but it's not something I delved in. It was more of a coverage, covering the day as opposed to second-guessing every single thing.

It's really the extent of it. One of our participants commented that reminds them of that time that John Spano bought the Islanders. And turned out he didn't, you know, didn't have money or didn't buy the Islanders. Another question came in and it was for Jennifer, but maybe I'll ask and this will be sort of our parting shot. How, with all this going on, do you— does a journalist make time for the family My day has changed because we no longer—

I mean, those of us in the field, we don't really have producers assigned like the Long Island producer. So we are the producers. And my workout schedule, for instance, has changed. Before, I would do a run in the morning or a workout and then go to work. Well, now I'm up at 5:30 in the morning, I'm at the gym, At the crack of dawn, getting my story list together, making the calls. The hardest part for me is like 5:45 to 7:45, just to get all that in and get ready for our Zoom call. So my time for the family comes after work rather than before work. And fortunately, the kids are in college and above. So, um, but, you know, for my husband, we always have dinner together every night and talk over our days and You know, all of that, but it just— you have to fudge things here and there and take advantage of weekends.

Yeah, and I would agree with, with Jennifer. My day has started earlier now so that my read-in for the day is now, you know, 6 o'clock, 5:30 in the morning. The other thing I have to do is at the end of the day, I have to create a boundary, whether I'm working at home or coming back in. It's like, no, the day is over. If there's something breaking, people know how to get a hold of me. But you have to make an effort to step away from the computer and not answer emails.

Lower the lid on the laptop. That's how we all knew during the pandemic, the throws— it's still on, but that the workday was over, right? The lid is down. Bob or Michael?

Oh yeah, I'm sorry, Bob. Weekends are precious. They, you know, my kids are still young. They're in every sport imaginable. And so we, we know during the week it's, it's tough. But I, you know, when I get home, yeah, we get to do a few things and they're in bed. They're young, 8 and 11. But, but the weekends are, are very important.

As a retired journalist, I will say the one thing I don't miss is when I was the Albany bureau chief and I would get a phone call at 12:15 in the morning saying, The New York Times is carrying a story saying that the governor is thinking of doing X. And I would say to the desk, yeah, and the governor is also thinking of doing Y and Z, and they're floating the story in the New York Times just to see which one you like. And they say, well, can you match it? At 12:15 at night, they said to me, can you match it? I can remember actually crying on one of those occasions. So I don't miss that even a little tiny bit.

Are you suggesting that sometimes the second floor would put a story out to start a topic?

I know that because the guy used to be the Secretary of the Governor. I had him to lunch one day and he said, the reason we tell the Times stuff is because we know you guys will all follow them. So that's why I give them that middle initial, NYFT.

Sometimes it was a person with the same name as one of our panelists.

Yes, Michael Del Giudice. One of my favorite rhymes in the LCA show, Bob Delgado, who was the former Secretary to the Governor, was a nasty character in many ways. Uh, and he was—

he—

in the song was, we are teaching Del Judas to screw those who screwed us, and he'll carry on when I'm gone. So that's one of my favorite lines from the LCA show. Sorry, Michael.

No, love it.

Well, I want to thank everybody. With that, I think we're at the— we're at time. It's a— it's a wrap with this— with this, uh, this team. I, I, I enjoyed it greatly. I, I like doing this. It's not my business. It's not my day job or even my my hobby. I just, I love the interaction. And I think I took copious notes that I'll use to follow up. And I appreciate Bob and Michael and Jennifer and Terry for joining us and sharing, sharing your stories. They all resonated. You know, you sometimes forget that some of those stories were Long Island-based, and you were all live on the scene or shortly thereafter, making it real for the rest of the public. So I appreciate that and your time this morning.

The Fair Media Council is a 501 nonprofit organization advocating for quality news and working to create a media-savvy society. For more information about the Fair Media Council and upcoming Fast Chat shows, check out fairmediacouncil.org. This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network.

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