Craig Schneider

Growing up on Long Island, I did magic and ventriloquism shows for kids parties. Much has changed. I always loved to write, and working at the student newspaper at Stony Brook University persuaded me to make journalism my career.

Being a reporter was a wonderful way to come into adulthood, seeking out the right and wrong of things, exposing wrongdoing, telling people’s stories, speaking truth to power. Reporters see so much of the grist of life. I meet people at extreme moments of their lives, good and bad.

I take this work very seriously, seeing a free press as a great right of American life.

I take this work very seriously, seeing a free press as a great right of American life. When I interview people, they don’t know me from Adam, but I’m going to make them known to so many. That’s a big responsibility.

I had the privilege of growing up in North Bellmore during a golden era for Long Island, the ’60s and ’70s. Our street had so many kids that we not only played spongeball, football and basketball, we had All-Star teams.

On Roosevelt Avenue, neighbors had long conversations over backyard fences, families helped each other shovel out from snowstorms, and my parents, Milty and Anita, were able to buy an affordable home, raise their kids in it, and then sell it to fund their retirement. If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is.

We were a Newsday family, getting the paper every day. My dad worked for Grumman and helped build the lunar module for the nation’s moonshot. I was a copy boy at Newsday during college, and I studied under former Newsday editor Howard Schneider at Stony Brook.

I remember what Mr. Schneider (no relation) once said during class – that a newspaper should be like a daily bible for people, telling stories that make people cry and laugh and everything between. I try to honor that every day.