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Interview by Raymond J. Keating
February 4, 2009
The Long Island Sentinel had the opportunity to interview former Newsday columnist Lawrence Levy. He shares some information on his own background, the future of the news business, and his job at Hofstra University as executive director of the National Center for Suburban Studies.
Sentinel: Give us a little background. What did you do before Newsday? How many years were you with Newsday, and how long as a columnist and editorial board member?
Lawrence Levy: I went to college on a baseball scholarship with the idea of being a sportscaster, to tell it like it is as the next Howard Cosell! I had a bit of an epiphany during the Kent State student strikes, when suddenly there was no sports news at the Boston University paper and I got a chance to cover the Boston police during some of the mini-riots. I eventually became news editor of a daily college paper founded that spring that still publishes. That summer, what I thought would be a sports writing internship at the Worcester Evening Gazette became a news job and I never looked back. I freelanced for various newspapers and magazines while still in college and was named a campus correspondent for the New York Times, which gave me a chance to write for the nation's largest paper before I'd even graduated. Over the next four years I wrote dozens of pieces for the Times and dozens more for other pubs. After I totaled my car and faced higher insurance bills, and needed medical insurance after I aged out of my parents coverage, I accepted a full-time job at Newsday. I worked my way up from local beat coverage of villages, towns, and schools to the post of Nassau bureau chief. I also had short stints in Albany and Washington to give me a taste of bigger things. I worked on a number of major series for which I was lucky enough to win some good prizes. After ten years, in 1987, I was asked to serve on the editorial board as an editorial writer, winning a Pulitzer Finalist award in 1999. I also was allowed to write my own column beginning in 1991. I left Newsday for Hofstra in September 2007 and gave up my column at the end of the year.
Sentinel: Why did you decide to retire from Newsday?
Lawrence Levy: I loved working at Newsday, but I got a wonderful offer from Hofstra to create a National Center for Suburban Studies. I'd spent years developing what amounted to a national suburban beat — you can see some of the articles on the NCSS website at Hofstra — and the chance to approach the same topics in a different way. I'm working like a dog but very happy there. President Stuart Rabinowitz and Provost Herman Berliner have encouraged me to think big and out of the box, to help brand the NCSS nationally. They've invested resources in our projects, including the National Suburban Poll, that have earned a lot of media attention and academic praise. This place is fun!
Sentinel: Are you doing any writing now? If so, for whom and what type of writing?
Lawrence Levy: I write frequently for the Albany Times Union. I covered the two national conventions for it and the syndicate that owns it, Hearst. I also wrote during the presidential campaign for NYTimes.com, as a contributor to the Campaign Stops blog. I've also dipped my toe into academic writing, teaming with Robert Lang, a trailblazer in analyzing suburban voting patterns. I was thrilled he was willing to partner with me. I think he was slumming! But seriously, it was good for me and very good for Hofstra to be invited into that league.
Sentinel: Before getting further into your work at Hofstra, what are your thoughts on the future of newspapers and the news business in general?
Lawrence Levy: It's going to be a tough future. Newspapers need to find a new economic model,which many already are groping towards — disseminating the information they gather from a variety of platforms, to get more readers and thus advertisers. It's possible that some newspapers may find a way to survive as part of community trusts — endowed by wealthy individuals who also give it editorial independence. I don't think newspapers are dead for the foreseeable future, but they are hurting and need to "reinvent" themselves, but hopefully — and here is the key — as news organizations that maintain journalistic standards and values. If not, we — Americans and our democracy — are in a lot of trouble.
Sentinel: How long have you been with Hofstra University?
Lawrence Levy: Year and a half.
Sentinel: What is the National Center for Suburban Studies, for which you serve as executive director?
Lawrence Levy: It's essentially a think tank that conducts research, holds conferences on a variety of issues but from a suburban perspective. We use Long Island, one of the first post-WWII suburbs, as a laboratory to study issues and institutions in a way that offers lessons for people in communities beyond Nassau and Suffolk. We spend a lot of time focusing on forging collaborations with other major institutions.
Sentinel: What is the center’s mission and goals?
Lawrence Levy: If I were flip, I'd say that our mission is to get Hofstra's name in the paper and on TV but only for doing quality stuff. There's some truth to that — I spend a lot of time on TV or being quoted in newspapers on politics and suburban issues — but we really want to advance the understanding of the suburbs. These are the most demographically dynamic places in the country, changing fast in many ways. They are not your mother and father's suburbs any more, changing so fast that they may not even be your children's suburbs. All this change, new arrivals and new development in many places, has created great ferment and many problems that are ripe for study. We would like to inform the public policy debate but in a non-partisan, non-ideological way.
Sentinel: What projects/events/conferences has the center been involved with under your directorship? Give us some details.
Lawrence Levy: There have been a number of good ones. Check out our website at www.hofstra.edu/ncss. We recently completed a study of New Cassel's revitalization. We worked with Brookings on a series of proposals and conferences on reviving metro areas. There's the National Suburban Poll with Princeton Research, a national conference on the future of housing in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, a major collaboration with Boston College on suburban ecology, a newly christened study on arts in suburbia for the Long Island Arts Alliance. We're trying to come up with projects on economics. And our team, led by the international firm Arup, won the bid on the Long Island Sustainability study — what the region needs to do now to survive in the more distant future. I'm very excited about this project, a real chance to make a difference.
Sentinel: I understand you have an upcoming conference – what is that all about?
Lawrence Levy: I’ll again refer you to our website for some detail, but it's a three day national conference on diversity in suburbia — that’s diversity in race, ethnicity, life style, even politics. We will look at the impact of the changing face of suburbia on everything from housing and health care to arts and social services. So far, though the conference isn't until October, we have received papers from major academic figures, including the father of suburbanology, Herbert Gans, the author of the Levittowners. I'm now trying to raise funds to have a related awards and cultural gala to bring the broader community together with scholars. Hopefully (hint hint), one of your corporate readers would like to contribute!
Sentinel: How does the center work with students?
Lawrence Levy: We don’t have much contact with students... yet. The president would like to see academic courses or one day perhaps a degree in suburban studies but that's a ways off. I teach a course in the journalism school... on editorial writing. I really enjoy the students. They're bright and talented and challenging for an old dog trying to learn new tricks and teach old ones!
Sentinel: Any other bits of wisdom you want to leave us with?
Lawrence Levy: Buy low, sell high. And soak the rich! I said that for you, my conservative friend. But seriously, Long Island may have a lot of problems, but it also has a lot of potential. If Long Islanders will look beyond their narrow self interest and be willing to sacrifice perhaps a little home rule at times for the broader good, we can make a lot of progress in keeping our younger and older residents, and educating a work force that employers need. In short, guys like you and me have to be willing to step outside of our ideological comfort zones to put our collective brainpower together.
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