The honors for Rockaway's weekly, The Wave (http://www.rockawave.com), keep piling up. Recently the Village Voice named the paper the best community paper in NYC. And now NY Magazine follows up. Funny how they never mention the education columnist. Here is editor Howard Schwach's piece from last week's edition:
The prestigious New York magazine has named The Wave as the tenth best reason to love New York City in its latest issue, which hit the newsstands on Tuesday.
The weekly glossy magazine touts Rockaway as a "reporters dream," writing, "While The Wave covers every eighth-grade graduation and Little League parade, the paper also boasts a genuinely first-class investigative re - porting division. Some of the stories The Wave has reported this year: the booming population of registered sex offenders residing in Rockaway; the proposed closing of many of Rockaway's adult homes; the saga of Kareem Bellamy, a convicted murderer whose 25-to-life sentence was overturned based on evidence now suspected to be fraudulent; the financial controversy surrounding Demo cratic district leader Gerald ine Chap ey. These are not the type of stories one finds in a community paper."
Wave managing editor Howard Schwach told New York Magazine writer Alex French, "This is a real newspaper. The stories we follow are often blotter items in the Times or the Post, but they're important stories to Rockaway, and the people who live here aren't going to get that news anywhere else."
For the story, French interviewed Schwach, Wave publisher Susan Locke, Wave general manager Sanford Bernstein and reporter Nicholas Briano.
French says that he first came to Rockaway to cover the story of Bobby Vaughn, a gangster surfer who opened a surf shop on Beach 116 Street. He came to The Wave to get some local color and to find out how the community felt about the new business in town.
"I was very impressed with The Wave and the way it covered all of Rockaway," French says. "I wanted to find out more and I pitched the idea of including the paper in our year-ending 'Reasons to Love NYC' edition."
French also interviewed Congress - man Anthony Weiner, who is often excoriated by the local paper.
Weiner recently went on the Congressional Record praising The Wave for being named "The Best Community Newspaper in NYC" by the Village Voice.
"Make no mistake, when I get bitten by The Wave, I feel it," Weiner told French.
But, the congressman said, every Friday he sends a staffer to buy the paper for him and if he's in DC, he gets parts of the paper faxed to him.
"I cancel my subscription to the Times two or three times a year," he told French. "But, I can't do without The Wave."
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