The Silurians Press Club

Aileen Jacobson Elected President, Fran Carpentier First Vice President

By Ben Patrusky

Aileen Jacobson, who covered the arts and personal finance for three decades at Newsday and has freelanced for the New York Times and other publications for the past 16 years, was elected the 74th president of the Silurians Press Club, heading the 2024 – 2025 slate of officers and board of governors.

For the past two years, in her role as Vice President, Jacobson served as editor of the Silurian News. Assuming the editorship is Fran Carpentier, a 30-year veteran of health and lifestyle journalism, the newly elected First Vice President. Rounding out the officer roster are Carol Lawson, who continues as Secretary, and Karen Bedrosian-Richardson, who remains as Treasurer.

Jacobson succeeds Joseph Berger, who during his two-year tenure as president presided over monthly lunches that featured an outstanding array of speakers. They included: Paul Steiger, founding editor of ProPublica, together with editor-in-chief Steve Engelberg; best-selling New Yorker writer Ken Auletta; Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism; longtime Newsday investigative reporter and author Tom Maier; Brooke Kroeger, author of “Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism”; New York Times White house correspondent Maggie Haberman; Joe Kahn, executive editor of the New York Times; and most recently, New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, winner of the 2024 Peter Khiss Award.

A graduate of Harvard and the Columbia School of Journalism, Jacobson began covering the arts and other topics in the early 1970s as a staff writer for the Washington Post’s Sunday magazine. In 1974, Jacobson joined Newsday, where she remained until 2008, reporting on news, arts, books and magazines, reviewing theater, and writing about personal finance. She is the author of “Women in Charge: Dilemmas of Women in Authority” and co-author of “The Consumer Reports Money Book.”

Carpentier spent most of her career as senior editor at Parade, the national Sunday newspaper, which during her tenure was distributed to 35 million homes every week, reaching more than 70 million readers coast to coast. Carpentier conceived, edited and wrote articles for Parade on a wide range of topics, including health, personal finance and food, often working in collaboration with such notable contributors as Gloria Steinem, Gail Sheehy and Bill Moyers. She also served as web producer and editor-at-large for the health, lifestyle and food channels at Parade.com.

Two longstanding governors — Myron Kandel and Allan Dodds Frank – both former presidents, twice in Kandel’s case – are stepping down from the board. To honor them for their invaluable contributions, and to continue to benefit from their keen knowledge and wise counsel, the board deemed fit to elect them board members emeriti. In their emeritus capacity, each is welcome to join in all board deliberations as they wish, sans vote. Emeritus status was also conferred upon another former president, Mort Scheinman, in acknowledgment of his many years of exceptional board service

Newly elected to fill vacant board seats were two consummate journalists. Kathleen Campion and Tom Watkins. Campion is a nationally recognized financial correspondent with a gift for making the opaque in marketing reporting transparent. At Bloomberg News she was one of three managers who created Bloomberg’s broadcast and cable media. Watkins is an award-winning journalist with extensive experience reporting, producing, writing and editing for print, websites, television and radio. During his 24 years at CNN, he was a member of teams that won three Peabodys, one duPont-Columbia Award and four News and Documentary Emmy Awards.

In addition to Berger, who will resume his position as a member of the board upon completion of his tenure as president, returning board members include Linda Amster, David Andelman, Betsy Ashton, Suzanne Charlé, Jack Deacy, Bill Diehl, Tony Guida, Fred Herzog, Chester A. Higgins Jr, Mel Laytner, David Margolick, Ben Patrusky, Myron Rushetsky, Michael Serrill and Scotti Williston.