Wagner alumni have gone on to lead and serve our host community’s hometown newspaper, the Staten Island Advance
by Diane Lore
Wagner College has longstanding ties to its “hometown newspaper,” the Staten Island Advance. For more than 80 years, a distinguished cadre of Wagner alumni has gone on to work as editors and reporters at the Advance. Many of them first honed their journalism skills on the staff of the Wagnerian, or through the Advance student internship program.
The Advance, published daily and Sunday, with its 24/7 website SILive.com, serves Wagner’s home community of Staten Island — a multi-faceted, diverse borough of New York City.
Three key Advance leaders — late Editor Les Trautmann ’40, current Editor Brian Laline MSEd’72, and journalism professor Claire Regan ’80, a former Advance associate managing editor — are all Wagner alumni.
The Trautmann legacy
Perhaps no Wagner alumnus did more to foster ties between college, community and journalism than Les Trautmann. His legacy is still felt, more than 30 years after his death.
There were three things Trautmann was passionate about: Wagner, Staten Island and reporting the news.
He never said “no” to his alma mater. Trautmann was president of the Wagner alumni board, a regular columnist for the alumni magazine, and served on the board of trustees (1982-86). In 1989 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wagner, conferred by then-President Norman Smith, who had just come on board.
In an essay published in the Fall 1992 alumni newsletter, shortly after Trautmann’s death, Smith acknowledged Trautmann’s crucial support in guiding the college through a difficult period of renewal, ultimately leading to Wagner being named one of the prominent small, private liberal arts colleges in the northeast in annual national rankings by U.S. News & World Report.
“Les Trautmann was one of the first Wagner alumni I met,” Smith recalled. “He was on the advisory search committee that screened dozens of presidential candidates. He was also one of the first Wagner alumni to give me advice after I was selected president.”
While he was Advance editor, Trautmann, who lived a few blocks from campus, “made it a daily habit to walk through the Wagner campus each evening after dinner — his constitutional,” Smith said. “I would walk with him occasionally.”
“Les and I shared a vision for Wagner College,” Smith said. He believed “that Staten Island would benefit enormously if it was home to a prestigious private college, and should have had that status decades ago. [Wagner] should be among the prominent, small, private liberal arts colleges in the country,” Smith said.
Over the next two years, Trautmann’s daily walks turned into inspection tours. “Les never hesitated to criticize, yet in my experiences with him he never held back credit where he thought it was due,” Smith said. “Thankfully, he liked what was going on at Wagner throughout the four years he knew me as the college’s president.”
And, according to President Smith, Trautmann made it a point to report on the college’s changes in the pages of Wagner’s hometown newspaper. “There is no question in my mind that Wagner College would not have made so much progress in so short a time without the encouragement and support of Les Trautmann and the Staten Island Advance,” Smith said.
As reported in the Advance, a permanent testament to Trautmann’s loyalty to his alma mater, Trautmann Square — with its distinctive clock tower — was dedicated on June 6, 1993. At this writing, Les Trautmann is the only person, besides campus founder Pastor Fredric Sutter, to have an outdoor space named in his honor.
Born and raised on Staten Island — and always proud to be referred to as a “native Islander” — Trautmann was editor of the Advance for 27 years before his death in 1992. His interest in journalism was sparked during his senior year (1939-40) when he served as editor of the Wagnerian and as a summer intern at the Advance. With his internship experience and his Wagner B.A. in English, he was accepted to the Columbia School of Journalism and earned a master’s degree in his craft. He was hired as a full-time news reporter for the Advance and worked as a reporter for one year before Uncle Sam called. In 1942, was drafted by the Army to serve in World War II. While serving as a second lieutenant and stationed in the South Pacific, Trautmann put his journalism skills to use by founding seven different Army publications.
Upon his return to the Advance in 1946, Trautmann worked as an editorial writer, then left the paper in 1954 to become editorial page director of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. He came back to the Advance a year later and was promoted to city editor in 1962.
In 1965 Advance Publisher Richard E. Diamond, citing Trautmann’s newspapering and journalism skills and knowledge of Staten Island, promoted him to editor. Over the next 27 years Trautmann led the Advance in crusading against — and eventually defeating — several large-scale projects that he saw as being detrimental to the health and well-being of Staten Island residents. In the late 1980s, for example, he doggedly pursued New York State officials — even taking on the governor — over the state Power Authority’s plans to site a massive fossil-fueled power plant in the community. Many months later the proposal was nixed after the state’s own environmental protection studies were found to support the newspaper’s stance.
Trautmann also had a keen eye for hiring new, young staff memberswho were familiar with the community and its hometown newspaper. He hired both Laline and Regan not long after they earned their Wagner degrees.
“He cared about the community,” Publisher Richard Diamond said in a front-page Advance story published February 17, 1992, reporting Trautmann’s death. “He was also extremely proud that he was a teacher of young journalists,” Diamond added.
Trautmann suffered a heart attack and died in his sleep.
“Les was a great journalist who wanted the best for Staten Island, the Advance and Wagner,” said current Advance Editor Brian Laline. “As a journalist, Les understood what [Staten] Islanders needed to know and what they wanted to read; he knew instinctively what breaking news stories to follow, and what features to assign,” Laline recalled. “As editor, he was tough but fair with his staff, a stickler for accuracy, who pushed his staff to be their best.”
After Trautmann
Brian Laline, who was also born and raised on Staten Island, came of age during the Vietnam era. When a childhood leg injury kept him from being drafted, he began to think he might like teaching as a career. After earning his bachelor’s degree from LaSalle University in Philadelphia, he returned home to enroll at Wagner, earning a master’s degree in education in 1972.
“Going to Wagner was a wonderful experience. It was like a homecoming for me, after being in Philadelphia,” Laline said.
While at Wagner, Laline took a class with distinguished English professor Thomas Kendris. The senior Kendris, who died in 1995, influenced a generation of Wagnerians; Laline was one of them. Professor Kendris, Laline said, made him think seriously about writing. “We looked at different authors in his class. We read their works and discussed their writing style. He taught me that every piece of writing should have a flow, a rhythm, a style. I never forgot that.”
Instead of looking for a career in teaching, Laline thought of writing; specifically, a job with his hometown newspaper. “When I came in for an interview, Les loved the idea that I went to Wagner. He was asking me how I liked the experience,” Laline recalled.
He was hired by Trautmann in 1972 and spent his early years as a reporter and copy editor on the news desk. Laline said he’s grateful for those early years, when he learned the newspaper business from publisher Dick Diamond, from Trautmann, and from working alongside seasoned newsroom colleagues, among them Wagner alumni Mike Azzara ’57 and Phil Brittain ’52.
Laline was serving as Advance associate editor when Trautmann died, and not long after, publisher Diamond promoted him to editor. “Les was a tough act to follow, but he ran a tight ship and had built such a good team that we didn’t miss a beat,” Laline said.
“We all believed, as Les did, that a newspaper should make a difference in the community. We took on several projects as a team that, today, I’m still proud of,” he said.
The newspaper sponsored a long-running anti-litter campaign known as Trashbusters, partnering with community organizations, Scout troops and the city’s Sanitation Department to clean up public spaces. Another community cause, the Staten Island Children’s Campaign, benefited nonprofits and agencies working with children and families in the community.
And after a 6-year-old girl was struck and killed crossing the street in front of her school bus, the Advance partnered with local education officials to launch a major school-bus safety campaign. The series of articles, published over several weeks, resulted in the installation of today’s red safety “STOP” sign arms on yellow school buses serving children in New York City, as well as the modification of school traffic laws. “We got results; we cut through the bureaucracy; we made a difference for kids, for the community,” Laline said.
Laline, who recently marked his 30th year as editor and his 50th year at the newspaper, said he is also proud of the Advance internship program, which carries on Trautmann’s commitment to mentoring young journalism students.
“Our interns hit the ground running. We don’t have them doing menial tasks; from the very first day, we throw them into the deep end of the pool. We pay them and treat them as staff. We send them out to cover news stories as we would any full-time reporter. They learn to do interviews, gather the facts, write their stories. And they get bylines, sometimes on front-page stories,” Laline said.
According to Laline, in its heyday, the Advance summer internship program, especially, benefited from Claire Regan’s teaching experience and organizational skills, both as an adjunct professor of journalism at Wagner and as the longtime faculty adviser to the Wagnerian. She coordinated the newspaper’s internship program for 25 years.
Every year at least a dozen young, eager students from Wagner and other colleges, home for the summer and hired from a pool of applicants, arrived at the Advance in early May for the eight-to-12-week internship program. Regan, in her role as associate editor at the Advance, would greet and meet the new interns, show them around, introduce them to staff and explain how the newspaper is put together day by day. Over the course of the summer she conducted weekly meetings with interns to discuss assignments, writing skills and journalism topics, and to foster a sense of camaraderie. “We wanted it to be more than a summer job. We tried to make it as much of a learning experience, to teach them skills they could apply when they graduated,” she said.
The arrival of the summer intern corps was something the full-time staff looked forward to each year. Experienced reporters and editors were eager to critique, share advice and swap stories with the young student journalists. Some of the interns would reapply and return the next summer; some were hired as full-time staff after graduation. Wagner students who began as summer interns and were hired full-time include current Advance staffers Eddie D’Anna ’01, who is now breaking news editor; sportswriter Charlie DeBiase Jr. ’93, and Sunday news editor, reporter and social media engagement manager Mark Stein ’10. Still other recent Wagner alumni, like Jodie Bonhometre ’22, applied their Advance internship experience to pursue different media job paths. Bonhometre is currently online coordinator for the Estee Lauder Companies Inc.
Continuing the Wagner connection
Whenever Regan introduces herself to her Wagner journalism students each semester, she says she breaks the ice with a few biographical facts, before getting to the point: “I stress to them that Wagner bonds last a lifetime and Wagner connections go a long way,” she said.
Regan was also born and raised on Staten Island; her parents had met while both were teaching high school. When she was an undergraduate in the late ’70s there were no journalism classes at Wagner, so Regan majored in education, expecting to follow in the footsteps of her parents. Without realizing it, however, she was learning how to be a journalist by working on the staff of the Wagnerian.
It was a Wagner connection that helped Regan land her first job at the Advance after she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1980. Longtime registrar Barney Jensen knew of her interest in journalism, and when his friend at the Advance, Lifestyle Editor Larry Miraldi ’68, mentioned he was looking to fill a job, Jensen passed the word to Regan. She applied and was called in for an interview with Trautmann.
“I don’t remember much about that meeting because I was so nervous, but I do remember that Wagner came up. ‘So, you’re a Wagner grad,’ I recall him saying, as he leaned back in his chair and took a puff from his pipe.” Trautmann hired her as a wedding and engagement writer. It was a part-time, entry-level job, but she was determined to make it a learning experience. Correctly spelling dozens of names of bridesmaids, ushers and family members established “a useful obsession with accuracy,” she said.
Regan said she’s grateful for her years at the Advance, for allowing her to grow her own skills as a professional journalist while continuing to teach and mentor young people. “Les and Brian were great mentors. I learned so much from them and from all the seasoned editors and staff I had the opportunity to work with,” she said.
Like Trautmann, Regan remains committed to her alma mater, to journalism, and to mentoring and teaching young people the craft. She was recently elected national president of the Society of Professional Journalists and is active in the Deadline Club of New York, the local chapter of SPJ. Both sponsor networking and professional development opportunities for young journalists. Today her Wagner students have the opportunity to pursue a minor in journalism while still getting hands-on experience through the Wagnerian. And through their internships at the Advance and elsewhere, they carry on Wagner’s mission of uniting classroom learning with practical application through professional experiences in the workplace and community.
Journalist Diane Lore covered the education beat, writing many news stories about Wagner College, during her 40-year career as a reporter for the Staten Island Advance. She is the proud mom of two Wagner alumni, Andrew Palladino ’08 and Kathleen Palladino ’18 MSEd’19.
