Three past Press Club of Long Island presidents — Bill Bleyer, Carl Corry and Chris Vaccaro — and the current club president, Scott Brinton, addressed the roughly two dozen participants in Stony Brook University’s Robert W. Greene High School Institute, which brings together student journalists from across Long Island and even New York City.
The club presidents together spoke to the students on Friday about the importance of early-career networking and offered ways to get involved in PCLI, a chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Photo by Scott A. Brinton/Press Club of Long Island
Additionally, Bleyer, Corry and Vaccaro volunteered as editors of students’ work as they finished stories for publication in the Greene Gazette, the institute’s online publication.
Photo by Scott A. Brinton/Press Club of Long Island
The institute honors Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and editor Robert W. Greene, a longtime giant at Newsday. The Press Club annually helps fund the institute.
Photo by Scott A. Brinton/Press Club of Long Island
“It was the last thing my father told me he desired to see come to fruition,” said Greene’s son, Robert W. Greene Jr., according to Stony Brook’s website. “To him, high school newspapers and the students working their respective ‘beats’ were not only the future of the industry but, more importantly, the safeguard to ensure the true meaning of the First Amendment’s freedom of the press.”
Photo by Scott A. Brinton/Press Club of Long Island
Stony Brook’s intensive, residential summer workshop takes place annually in July, introducing student journalists to the basic skills in news reporting, writing, editing and video production. Students live at the university and work in the School of Journalism’s multimedia newsroom under the instruction of professional journalists.
Photo by Scott A. Brinton/Press Club of Long Island