Jeanne Straus, President of Straus News, looks over issues of her company’s newly acquired New York City weeklies with William Pecover, Tom Allon and Richard Burns of Manhattan Media. Photo by Aaron Adler.

Straus News, a leading community news publisher and owner of weeklies in the tri-state region, today acquired Manhattan’s premiere weekly newspapers.

The weeklies include one of New York City’s best-known papers, Our Town, along with its sister publications Our Town Downtown, The West Side Spirit, The Chelsea Clinton News and The Westsider, as well as NYPress.com.

These papers reach more than 180,000 unique weekly print and digital readers through free distribution to more than 3,000 upscale Manhattan apartment buildings, news boxes and in-store racks.

NYC roots

The purchase also puts the papers into the hands of a successful publisher owned by a family with longtime roots in New York City.

With the acquisition, the Straus family re-enters the New York City media market. The family made radio history when it owned WMCA Radio, 570 AM. Playing rock n roll in the 1960s, and known to Baby Boomers as the “Home of the Good Guys,” Straus-owned WMCA ranked #1 as the most listened to New York City radio station.

Later, the Straus family transformed WMCA Radio into New York’s premiere talk radio station, with well-known hosts such as Barry Gray, who also wrote regularly for Our Town.

“We’re committed to local news and covering the issues that matter to people’s everyday lives,” said Straus News Publisher Jeanne Straus, who lives in West Side Spirit territory. “We relish the opportunity to take over publishing these terrific papers in the greatest city in the world.”

Tom Allon, the long-time publisher/editor of the Manhattan Newspaper Group, will remain as president and CEO of Manhattan Media.

“I’m very happy that we have found in Straus News a buyer who understands community journalism, the neighborhoods of Manhattan and recognizes the need to keep these five newspapers vibrant parts of our city,” Allon said. “After more than a quarter century of being involved with West Side Spirit and Our Town, I look forward to being a regular reader of these award-winning publications.”

Richard Burns, general partner of Isis and chairman of Manhattan Media, added: “We’ve been pleased and proud owners of the newspapers for more than a decade. They’ve not only played important roles in their communities but have also produced consistent financial returns for us. We know that Straus News has the know-how and commitment to make these papers a continuing vital part of the New York landscape.”

Following today’s sale, Isis continues to own and produce media properties like New York Family, the New York Baby Show, City & State (for professionals in city and state government in New York), as well as AVENUE magazine and Dan’s Papers LLC in the Hamptons.

Isis bought the newspapers it is selling in 2001.

About Straus News

Prior to acquiring these five publications, Straus News has been publishing nine local weekly newspapers and associated Web sites in the New York-New Jersey- Pennsylvania region.

Straus News also publishes Dirt, a magazine covering the local “green scene.”

Owned for decades by the Straus family, the papers focus on neighborhood issues that matter to people’s everyday lives, with a commitment to reporting the tough local stories while highlighting neighborhood successes and achievements.

The newspapers have won numerous awards for news coverage and editorial and advertising excellence, including first place for in-depth reporting for a series about heroin addiction and a prestigious National Education Writers Award.

The newspapers are distributed weekly to more than 80,000 homes.

Photo of Jerry Finkelstein by Jake Price

The last of the old-style publishing and political power brokers in New York City left us for the great cigar bar in the sky this week.

Jerry Finkelstein, a legendary newspaper publisher and political kingmaker, was my boss and mentor for 15 years. I am among many in New York who will mourn his death and will try to celebrate his colorful, charismatic life with fond reminiscences of a man who could have leapt off the pages of a Damon Runyan novel.

Everybody in New York’s local political world in the late 20th century had a favorite Jerry Finkelstein story.

One of mine is the tale of how he launched Barbara Walter’s television career back in the 1950s.

At the time, Finkelstein owned a public relations firm with the late political guru, Tex McReary. Two of their employees were young hotshots, William Safire (who later went onto fame as a New York Times columnist) and a young woman named Barbara Walters.

After two years toiling at the firm, Walters went into to see her boss, Mr. Finkelstein, to ask for a raise.

“Not yet, sweetheart,” Finkelstein said, with a cigar dangling from one side of his mouth.

And with that, Walters turned around, quit and sought her fame and fortune in television.

Safire, one of the great political columnists and linguists of his time, once inscribed in one of his books he gave to Finkelstein: “To Jerry: Who taught me all I know, but not all he knows.”

That summed up Jerry Finkelstein’s genius. He was always two chess moves ahead of you and you had to listen closely to his quiet instructions to glean a lesson. If you weren’t on your toes, you’d miss a thing or two.

In his younger years, he was a political reformer, who was a major player in Robert Caro’s famous New York City tome, “The Power Broker,” which was about the life and times of Robert Moses. Jerry was proud that he was one of the few people who stood up to the all-poweful master builder, Moses, and he learned a lot about how to pull the levers of power from those early political wars.

Finkelstein was also a pioneer in publishing — building a mini-empire in legal  newspapers  (The New York Law Journal and National Law Journal), in weekly community newspapers (a chain of 23 weeklies in the metropolitan area in the 1990s) and helping to to build a powerful resort newspaper in the Hamptons (Dan’s Papers). (He was the owner of Manhattan Media papers Our Town, the West Side Spirit, Chelsea Clinton News and the Westsider from 1986 – 2001.) He also started The Hill, D.C.’s powerful political newspaper that covers Congress and the White House.

I’ll never forget his wise advice to Dan Rattiner, whose 28-page weekly newspaper was struggling in the Hamptons in the late 1980′s until Finkelstein bought it: “Dan, there are three things you have to do to grow your newspaper. First, put a glossy wrap on it each week so you can get luxury advertisers like Revlon. Two, hire 10 kids every Saturday to throw the newspaper on every mansion lawn in Southampton and East Hampton. And three, stop being a schmuck who writes about the fishermen and start writing about the moguls who come  to  the Hamptons.”

Dan, wisely, followed these instructions to a tee. Within two summers under Jerry Finkelstein’s tutelage, Dan’s Papers went from 28 pages to 324 pages some summer weeks. Dan called me in a panic one late June day and said: “I have a crisis. I just called the printing plant and they can only print 324 pages and I have advertisers that we can’t fit into our July 4th edition. What should I do?”

I said: “What should you do? Thank whatever g-d you pray to that you met Jerry Finkelstein.”

Jerry was a political mastermind who was able to convince Robert Kennedy to run for Senator in New York in 1964. Jerry knew how to play both sides of the political aisle and became close to not just Kennedy but also to Republicans like New York Governor and later U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Alfonse D’Amato. Jerry was even able to maneuver and spend a small fortune to get his own son, Andy Stein, to be elected City Council President, a heartbeat away from being New York City Mayor in the late 1980s.

Jerry Finkelstein was all about family — he had a wonderful, loving wife of more than six decades, Shirley, two sons who revered him, eight grandchildren who he doted on and who loved him dearly and many loyal friends who stayed with him until his last days at America’s most expensive nursing home, The Carlyle Hotel.

With his passing, an era in New York City history goes with him.

I am one of the many New Yorkers, who, like William Safire, can say that Jerry taught me all that I know about publishing and politics.

But not all that he knew.

Jerry Finkelstein, a great New Yorker, RIP.

Tom Allon is the President of Manhattan Media and a 2013 candidate for Mayor of New York City.

“I think our school system is largely stalled right now,” asserted New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, one of the forum’s three undeclared Democratic candidates along with City Comptroller John Liu and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. “We need a very serious reset.”

De Blasio focused on the importance of early childhood education throughout the discussion, an issue which all potential candidates supported. He called for universal pre-kindergarten programs and expanded extracurricular activities across the city, arguing “that’s the kind of investment we need to make, or we’re not serious about turning the corner with our school system.”

Liu emphasized the necessity of preparing students to not only enter college, but to graduate from it as well. To keep students on track, he proposed hiring more guidance counselors and reducing the current system’s heavy focus on standardized testing—another issue that the potential candidates uniformly agreed needs to be addressed—as well as cultivating better communication with students’ families, whose voices, he argued, are too rarely considered.

“We need to engage the public more in terms of what the schools need, what communities need, what families and parents need,” he said.

Quinn, who is considered an ally of current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, agreed that the current administration still has many shortcomings that need to be overcome. She supported an evaluation system that would weed out bad educators, and argued that reducing testing would grant teachers more freedom and creativity in their lesson plans. “For a child who might not learn in the traditional way,” she said, “having that level of attention on standardized testing significantly reduces or eliminates the moments where that child’s mind might get passion or a spark might get set off.”

She noted, “Clearly progress has been made, but not enough.”

Tom Allon, CEO of the forum’s sponsor Manhattan Media and a declared Republican candidate, advocated what he called a “medical model” of teacher training to ensure that they have proper experience before taking over a classroom. Through a tier-track system and mandatory three-year in-class training period, the city would boost its low teacher retention numbers, he asserted.
“What [the Bloomberg administration] has missed is the fundamental problem of education,” said Allon, “which is that we’re just not properly training teachers before they get into the classroom, and we’re not giving them proper instructions once they get into the classroom.”

The only declared Democratic candidate, former city comptroller and 2009 mayoral candidate Bill Thompson, focused his criticism on chronic school closures, the root of a tension between public and charter schools. He spoke of the particular difficulties of the recently popular “co-location” of public and charter schools in the same buildings, where public schools are often inferior in resources and appearances. “The children feel as if they’re second-class citizens,” he argued, which creates disruptive rifts in what is supposed to be a mutually beneficial approach to learning.
Thompson agreed that early childhood education is essential, and that teachers need more professional development opportunities and support. “Education is collaborative,” he said. “The schools that do better are the schools that have individuals who work together with one teacher to help improve another teacher.”

The forum, held at Fordham University, was the first joint appearance of the five mayoral hopefuls since the presidential election earlier this month, and also since Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, a presumed mayoral candidate, announced that he would run for city comptroller instead. The forum was considered an unofficial and symbolic start to the 2013 race, which will conclude next November.

McCourt emceed all the Blackboard Award ceremonies until his death in 2009, and I have no doubt his words and wisdom still echo in the minds of many the educators—teachers and principals alike—who were there during those ceremonies. They certainly do in me. McCourt’s message was that only a teacher really knows what it’s like to stand in front of classroom full of kids and get them to learn something. He bristled about how the teaching profession was besieged by so-called experts telling teachers what to do, when many of the experts themselves were never teachers. Mostly, though, he expressed a lot of camaraderie, respect and dark-humored sympathy for his fellow educators.

Only Frank could say it like Frank, but we try to carry his message forth in our own way: hoping to express that you, our dedicated and talented local educators, are deeply appreciated by many around you, your colleagues, students and parents. Chances are it was one of them who put in the nomination for you or your school.

Originally founded by the leaders of Manhattan Media, Tom Allon and Richard Burns, the Blackboard Awards are dedicated to honoring excellence in local education wherever it exists—public, private, charter or parochial school. It humbles us to learn about the good work you do, and that, in turn, impassions us to get out the word.

Speaking for all my colleagues at Manhattan Media, I have two final words for you: Thank you.

—Eric Messinger, Editor, New York Family

2012 Blackboard Award Winners

West Side YMCA, Where Teachers and Parents Work Hand-in-Hand

Students Learn to ‘GELL’ at Village School

Nurturing the Whole Child at St. Stephen of Hungary

PS 199 Creates Lifelong Learners

Horace Mann: A Century of Quality Teaching in the Heart of the City

Character Counts at Harlem Village Academies

The Uncommon Way: Improving the Norm for Inner-City Students

Small Step From High School to College

A Blueprint for the Global School of the Future

The World Awaits at Leman School

Emphasis on Whole Child at Battery Park School

Prepping for a Bright Future at Winston Prep

Math and Sciences Under Microscope at High School

All the World’s a Stage at Performing Arts School

Opening the Doors to the Future for Students

Empowering Students and Teachers to Find their Voice

For the first time in years, there will be three cyclist shows in four weeks. It’s all happening during Bike Month NYC (May), and the shows will celebrate all types of bikes, all kinds of riders, and the activity that brings them together.

Bike Month NYC will kick off with the New Amsterdam Bike Show, set to serenade New Yorkers with two days of bikes galore on April 28 and 29. The event, which is being organized by Manhattan Media, aims to establish New York as North America’s premiere Cycling Capitol. With sponsorship straight from the “Mecca” (KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, who fly out of Amsterdam, widely regarded as the “Biking Capitol of the World”) and an eye for a wide range of consumer tastes in bikes, The New Amsterdam Bike Show looks to lead the way for cyclists this spring.

But Manhattan Media’s darling child isn’t the only pony in this show. It’s all about the bikes, and for that reason, cycling fans should rejoice at the fact that the festivities will continue when TD Bank’s Five Borough Bike Tour’s “Bike Expo” returns – this time with 80 booths and scores of additional activities. The Bike Expo hopes to bring “cycling to the center stage” on May 3 through 5, the days preceding the TD Bank Five Borough Bike Tour.

And while the grueling Five Borough circuit will claim the day for thousands of New Yorkers on May 6, there will still be more to do in the big bad city for those who just can’t get enough of the cycle-centric craze. And so, New Yorkers get one last reprieve in the form of the Gran Fondo Bike Expo – a homage to the road cycling and Italian-style bike racing, which will run on May 18 and 19 out of Penn Plaza Pavilion.

So if you haven’t already, switch gears! Forget running sneakers and costly cars. Just locate your old bike – or better yet, buy a new one! It’s time to ride, and it’s time to join the rest of the city in a month of cycling-centered initiatives.

After all, cyclists are more than the individuals who pedal: they are a community, as vibrant and vital to the city’s character as any activity. And this year, the New York cycling community is putting the rest of us on notice. This year, the city that never sleeps is becoming the city whose wheels never stop spinning.

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The recent purchase of Dan’s Papers by Manhattan Media is great news for readers of both publications. In today’s global economy, boundaries at the city line between New York City and Long Island mean very little

Each weekday, well over two hundred thousand Long Island residents travel to jobs in NYC—the economic engine of our Metropolitan region. Many others enjoy sporting events, the theater, museums, restaurants and shopping. A growing number of NYC residents have become reverse commuters to jobs on Long Island. It is naive to believe that NYC can survive economically in today’s ever-changing technology and global economy without Long Island and the rest of Metropolitan New York. The suburbs around the Big Apple are equally dependent on the success of NYC.

Let’s hope the merger of Dan’s Papers with Manhattan Media can serve as a model for others to emulate.

Sincerely,

Larry Penner
Great Neck, Long Island

Manhattan Media is a leading community media company in New York, with a diverse range of publications, including: AVENUE magazine, New York Press, Our Town, West Side Spirit, New York Family, City Hall and City Arts. The company is part of the portfolio of Isis Ventures Partners of New York City.

Dan Rattiner will be the editor-in-chief and president of the company, and Bob Edelman will remain publisher. They will report to Tom Allon, president and CEO of Manhattan Media. Dan’s Papers will be an operating subsidiary of Manhattan Media.

Dan’s Papers is enjoying its Golden 50th Anniversary this year, having been an integral part of the Hamptons since its founding in 1960. From its first eight-page edition in Montauk, published while the founder was home for the summer from college, it has grown to become the largest newspaper in the Hamptons, widely followed for its unique opinions, humor, news and the chronicling of the lives of the rich and famous.

“With 50 years under my belt leading Dan’s, I was looking for a partner that understood community publishing and could help us leverage the goodwill and relationships we have established in the Hamptons,” says Dan Rattiner.

“Community publishing is all about local knowledge, character, being present and understanding your readers and clients,” says Richard Burns, chairman of Manhattan Media and general partner of Isis Ventures. “Dan’s Papers has all of that and a remarkable community leader in the person of Dan Rattiner himself.”

Manhattan Media has committed to work with the existing Dan’s Papers team to invest in the company’s publications and online offerings. There are also plans to expand the publication’s live event division.

“While the Brown Publishing Company ran into all kinds of financial difficulties culminating in bankruptcy, we are happy to say that Dan’s Papers never stopped making money and we are acquiring a healthy, profitable media business upon which we expect to build,” added Burns.