The best day of school was when my dad came in to interview my class. As a broadcast journalist, he&rsquo;d ask us about anything, from our favorite Halloween candy to our summer plans. The segment was broadcast to morning commuters of Long Island.



	Although this day was a tradition throughout elementary school, it wasn&rsquo;t until college that I realized I could pursue this career.



	I graduated from Purchase College in 2016 with a degree in journalism. While there, I became passionate about telling people&rsquo;s stories. I see journalism as a platform to amplify the voices of those often unheard. The best way I can personally do that is through writing and videography.



	I was born and raised in Suffolk County. During college, my dream was to land a job at Newsday. I worked toward that for four years, giving endless hours to the school paper and absorbing everything I could during class. By senior year, I had an internship in New York City and a thesis to juggle. My thesis was about an organization in Port Jefferson Station, so I was constantly commuting.



	In the end, I was ecstatic to achieve my goal &mdash; I started my internship at Newsday right after graduation. It was an honor to be hired full time less than a year later as a digital reporter. Last year, I was promoted to the real estate beat.



	The best part of the job is meeting interesting people. I&rsquo;ve interviewed Japanese internment camp survivors, intersex advocates and young entrepreneurs.



	Meeting these special Long Islanders has inspired me. In my six years here, I&rsquo;ve gained a different perspective or learned something new from every person I&rsquo;ve written about.



	One rewarding part of the job is helping people capture something: achievements, milestones or the snapshots in between. Contributing to people&rsquo;s lives this way is something I&rsquo;ll never take for granted.



	At Newsday, many of us are lucky enough to call Long Island &ldquo;home.&rdquo; Since getting hired, I&rsquo;ve migrated from Suffolk to Nassau. I&rsquo;ve even taken part in the little joy of waking up and retrieving the paper at the end of the driveway.



	I think working at Newsday is something I was always meant to do. I probably knew it back then: sitting in the backseat, listening to my dad on the radio. And I&#39;m grateful to work in this field we both love.

Rachel Weiss

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Born and raised in Suffolk County, Rachel always wanted to be a journalist and follow in the footsteps of her dad. She is dedicated to bringing you in-depth real estate news and coverage. Meeting Long Islanders has helped her gain a different perspective.

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Newsday Journalists: Rachel Weiss

Newsday

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I didn&rsquo;t think I could be a sports reporter. &nbsp; Intellectually, I knew it was possible: I loved sports journalism, and as a kid, I&rsquo;d go to the corner bodega in my Brooklyn neighborhood every time I had a few cents to buy a newspaper and a bag of Dipsy Doodles. I had a scrapbook of all my favorite articles. &nbsp; But the obstacles felt too big. My parents were working-class immigrants who spoke little English and had no interest in sports, so I was gleaning what I could from articles, AM radio, and whatever was on broadcast TV. There was no way I was going to be able to afford college. And, oh yeah, I was a woman, and even in the early 2000s, there weren&rsquo;t too many print sports reporters who looked like me.&nbsp; &nbsp; So, when I say that I love this job, and I love what I do, it&rsquo;s not just because I get to go to games. It&rsquo;s also because of all the people who took a chance on me then &ndash; a skittish, outwardly docile 20-year-old who, frankly, didn&rsquo;t look like she could survive a day in a professional locker room. It took college advisors, kindly professors, copy editors, hiring editors, secretaries, clerks and coworkers to get me here, and I&rsquo;ll never not be grateful for that.&nbsp; &nbsp; I love that those values extend to Newsday&#39;s sports coverage as well. I feel our staff is just so adept at telling stories with nuance, narrative and depth, and having grown up reading every New York tabloid I could get my hands on, I know how different it is from everything else out there.&nbsp; &nbsp; But everyone always asks, &ldquo;Why sports?&rdquo; &nbsp; Well, sports is news, too. I started at Newsday as a news intern and freelanced as a news reporter (I could &ldquo;never&rdquo; be a sports reporter, remember?). I value hard-news reporting and feel it&rsquo;s necessary to incorporate that into sports, because in this role, we&rsquo;re journalists, not fans. I&#39;m consistently impressed with Newsday&#39;s high ethical standards in that regard.



	But it&#39;s more than that.&nbsp; &nbsp; Sports is a place you can tell a special type of story &ndash; a neat reminder of what it&rsquo;s like to lose big or win bigger. It&rsquo;s our everyday life, sped up and drawn out in loud technicolor. We&rsquo;ve all failed, and we all have our own underdog stories; we all know what it&rsquo;s like to want something badly and have it just beyond our reach. Sports is a reflection of all of that, and I think it&rsquo;s an honor to be able to write something that can resonate with people of all types &ndash; from the multimillion dollar athlete, to the little kid scrolling through her mom&rsquo;s phone. I mean, it helped me, all those years ago.&nbsp;



	I grew up reading Lisa Olson&#39;s sports columns. She had her photo in the paper, and just that image &ndash; a woman&rsquo;s wryly smirking face sitting above these beautifully written articles &ndash; eventually convinced me this gig wasn&rsquo;t as out of reach as I thought. (OK, fine. It took me a decade or so to get there.) &nbsp; So, after interning and freelancing and working retail and slinging lattes, I did end up reaching for the thing I actually wanted to do. I hope the stories we tell at Newsday can help me pay that forward to someone else.



	Education: Brooklyn College



	Honors and Awards: Finalist, New York Sports Writer of the Year, National Sports Media Association, 2022; Distinguished Sports Writing Award of Excellence, The New York News Publishers Association, 2020; Finalist, Deadline Club, digital innovation, 2016.

Laura Albanese

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Laura was unsure if she could be a sports reporter years ago, but that didn&rsquo;t stop her from pursuing her dreams and tackling the toughest media market in the country. Starting out as a Newsday news intern, she now covers all things New York baseball.

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Newsday Journalists: Laura Albanese

Education: The University of Arizona



	Andi Berlin is a food writer and restaurant critic. She joined Newsday in 2022 after more than a decade writing about restaurants for The Arizona Republic in Phoenix and The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, a UNESCO City of Gastronomy. She has also written food and travel pieces for The New York Times, London Eating, The San Francisco Bay Guardian and USA Today.



	Honors and Awards:&nbsp;First place in food writing, Arizona Press Club, 2019.

Andi Berlin

Sam Kmack

Long Island

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Suffolk police arrested and charged Yolany Y. Mejia Carranza, 55, with three counts of unauthorized practice of a profession. 

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"We worked quickly during the parade to have the displays removed," the Bayport-Blue Point Chamber of Commerce president said.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the funding for Hempstead on Friday, as well as $4.5 million for Farmingdale Village.

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Hempstead's Kevin Brown pleaded not guilty and was arraigned Wednesday in Mineola for allgedly running a fentanyl and dog fighting operation. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

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Jose Saez Jr., a pastor at Brentwood's Iglesia Cristiana Alumbrando El Camino, has pleaded guilty in federal court to sexual exploitation of a child. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports. 

Brentwood pastor pleads guilty to sexual exploitation of child 

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Former Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano will be resentenced on April 15, weeks after two counts of his corruption case were tossed out by an appellate court. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

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Drones and helicopters flew over the sites of the fires in Suffolk Monday as investigators determined the cause of the fires. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

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Before this year, no raccoon had a case of rabies in Suffolk County since 2009. NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn reports. 

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Scenes from Westhampton on Saturday evening as firefighters battled the brush fire.

Watch: Firefighters battle Westhampton fire

NewsdayTV's Andrew Ehinger is on the scene in Westhampton Beach Sunday, where officials are saying that the fires, which started Saturday night, has been completely 'knocked down.'

'We have about 600 acres burned'

NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie and NewsdayTV meteorologist Rich Von Ohlen discuss the brush fires that burned along Sunrise Highway and the damage they caused.

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Samuel Miele, former fundraiser for George Santos, has been sentenced to a year in prison. Miele pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud back in November 2023 and admitted to impersonating a high-ranking congressional aide while raising money for Santos' campaign.

Samuel Miele pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges

A bomb threat at Westhampton Beach High School and middle school caused students to evacuate the campus. Separately, Center Moriches schools went into a lockout because of a nearby police pursuit. 

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Find out what's happening with Nassau & Suffolk news, Long Island schools, plus the latest crime, courts, politics. Coverage includes Fire Island, the Hamptons & North Fork.

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