This appeared as my column in Long Island, New York newspapers.
By Karl Grossman
May 29, 2025
After 47 years, I am retiring as a professor at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.
A professor is what I always wanted to be. It’s hard to remember accurately what you were thinking when you were 14. But at that age, for an Eagle Scout Day in Queens, Eagle Scouts were asked in what occupational setting they would like to be placed for a day — and I chose a college.
I was coupled with the president of Queens College, toured it, visited classes, spoke with professors.
My trajectory changed at 17, when I went to Antioch College. I could have gone to Queens College, free at the time, and had received a Regents scholarship. But I wanted to see America, and I heard very good things about this college in Ohio.
At Antioch, I was diverted into journalism.
Antioch was a pioneer in work-study, called these days “applied” or “experiential” learning. Antioch students study on campus, then go on what it calls a “co-op” (for cooperative education), and then go back and forth between the campus and co-ops
In our second year, my girlfriend at Antioch since our first weeks there — and to whom I have now been married 64 years — chose a co-op at Cleveland General Hospital, to work with children with tuberculosis. Seeking to be with Janet, I chose a co-op at The Cleveland Press.
This is a corny story, but above the entrance to The Cleveland Press was its motto: “Give people the light and they will find their own way.” As a copy boy, I saw this happening
regularly, with “light” brought forth by a team of investigative reporters and resolutions of outrageous situations.
Only in teaching investigative reporting at Old Westbury did I realize what I had gotten into, how The Cleveland Press was the first newspaper of E.W. Scripps, a giant in last century’s Muckraking Era, his investigative commitment living on.
That, I decided, was what I wanted to do. So, I jumped on my motorcycle, Janet on the back, and we went home to New York.
I figured I needed more college to get into journalism. My father had heard of a school begun in Suffolk County, an extension of Adelphi University in Garden City, called Adelphi-Suffolk College, in Sayville (later Dowling College). And Janet was from Huntington.
We got married. I attended Adelphi-Suffolk for a year and a half, during which I started and was editor of the first newspaper at a four-year college in Suffolk County, which I named the New Voice.
Then, in the spring of 1962, itching to get going as a reporter, I answered an ad in The New York Times and got a job as a reporter at the Babylon Town Leader.
When I arrived, Robert Moses, a Babylon resident, had just announced his plan to build a four-lane highway the length of Fire Island. That was my first “big story.” The Leader for decades had challenged Moses projects. (It was the exception to what Robert Caro relates in his book “The Power Broker,” of Moses having the press in the New York area in his pocket.)
I wrote article after article about how the Moses highway would destroy the exquisite nature and extraordinary communities of Fire Island, and wrote of an alternative: a Fire Island National Seashore. A grassroots effort led to its creation in 1964.
But also in 1964, the Leader was sold to a New York City corporation that was buying up newspapers in Suffolk County, a radio station and planned a TV station. Now with a new owner, I had no protection from Moses at the Leader.
I covered the opening day of the 1964-65 World’s Fair, going there with people I covered at the Leader from Suffolk CORE and NAACP. They were protesting racism in hiring by the fair, of which Moses was president. I wrote an article about, and took photos of, the fair’s Pinkerton private force attacking the demonstrators, in the style of Alabama in those years.
Moses complained to the Leader’s new owners about my coverage, and I was fired.
But the daily Long Island Press took me on, and after several years of on a cops-and-courts beat, I was assigned to do investigative reporting and, in 1969, also given a column in the Sunday Press. This column is its continuation, because in 1977 The Press ceased publication.
Earlier, with rumors of The Press in trouble, I had finished a bachelor’s degree at Empire State College.
And I got call from folks at SUNY Old Westbury, who knew my work, to teach one of the first, if not the first, investigative reporting classes in the U.S. (Its original professor, Deirdre English, had taken a position as editor-in-chief of Mother Jones.)
As the years went by, I led in developing a comprehensive media and communications major, completed a master’s degree in media studies at The New School and became a full professor.
I’m so sorry to leave the wonderful SUNY Old Westbury. But I’ve been struck by a bad back problem exacerbated in the 150 miles of driving to and from school. Although not teaching journalism full time, I’ll very much keep doing it. I’ll complete my eighth book, continue hosting my nationally aired TV program, “Enviro Close-Up,” which I began 34 years ago, writing articles and this column.
It’s especially important in these times to do what one can, per The Cleveland Press motto, to give light so people can find their own way.