Then-Washington Post Publisher Philip L. Graham is credited with being the first to say, “Journalism is the first draft of history.”
Graham would not be the last to use the phrase for a good reason-there is much truth to what he said
This is particularly true on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Great Neck News.
The Great Neck News and its longtime competitor, the Great Neck Record, have chronicled Great Neck’s history from the heyday of the Jazz Age in the 1920s, through the suburban housing boom, and into a diverse, culturally vibrant 21st-century place.
We have, on occasion, had some stiff competition.
F. Scott Fitzgerald lived with his wife Zelda in the Great Neck Estates section of Great Neck in 1923 and 1924 while he was writing “The Great Gatsby,” which drew directly from the area’s wealthy social scene.
During this period, Great Neck was home to many newly wealthy individuals, including celebrities like writer Ring Lardner, actor Lew Fields, and comedian Ed Wynn. This community of “new money” residents is reflected in the novel’s depiction of West Egg as the home of the self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby.
An unnamed author of a story that appeared in the Great Neck News in 1926 complained that several New York critics were “trying to pin” West Egg on Great Neck.
Scholars and literary critics now widely acknowledge the parallels between the fictional settings in “The Great Gatsby” and the real communities of Great Neck and Sands Point.
We recently apologized for the error in the story – 99 years after the story was written.
The up-and-coming community portrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald in “The Great Gatsby” was reflected weekly in the pages of the Great Neck News, which featured stories and photos of the rich, famous, along with everyday residents
This included the many clubs, associations and governments joined by residents and advertising for all the latest businesses, from the Chrysler dealership selling the latest automobile for $750 to a full-fledged live theatre with a 1,500-seat auditorium, orchestra pit, and an organ—designed for Broadway-bound productions and high‑class vaudeville.
As Great Neck grew, so did the Great Neck News.
The Great Neck News covered the residential expansion, estate modernization, and architectural growth in the 1930s, the post-World War II growth when Great Neck saw the local population quintupled to around 25,000, which included a large influx of Jewish families from New York City
This would be accompanied by the construction of infrastructure that would pave the way for rapid growth in the 1950s and 1960s, and Great Neck’s continuation as a noted center for the arts that would soon also include highly regarded schools.
The post-World War II influx of new residents would be joined in the 1980s onward by new waves of residents, particularly Persian Jewish and East Asian communities, which drove demographic and cultural diversification.
All this would be reflected in the coverage of the Great Neck News, which would help attract new residents and businesses to flourish by allowing them to reach our readers.
The Great Neck News was not immune to all this change
The newspaper would pass into the hands of the Norris family before being sold to my company, Blank Slate Media, in March 2010.
I would then sell the Great Neck News, five other newspapers and the Blank Slate Media website, theisland360.com, to Schneps Media in July 2024, a few months after Anton Media Group sold the Great Neck Record and nine other papers to them.
The newspapers were then combined to form the Great Neck News Record as part of a consolidation that produced 10 newspapers. These 10 newspapers are part of an organization led by Vicki Schneps and her son Josh, which includes 100 daily, monthly, and weekly newspapers and magazines as well as a strong digital presence.
The result is a Great Neck News Record with the resources and leadership to continue chronicling the happenings in Great Neck now and, hopefully, for the next 100 years.
