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.”