Long before social media and smartphones, a proud 1964 promotional film captured the essence of midcentury Long Island—and the newspaper that helped shape it.
Titled Dateline: Long Island, this half-hour short was originally produced by Newsday and serves as both a nostalgic time capsule and a chest-thumping declaration of suburban promise. It’s filled with vintage shots of Levittown, farmland, missiles, bowling alleys, beaches, and even Camp Newsday—a summer program for the paper’s top delivery boys.
More than just a puff piece, the film reveals how Newsday positioned itself as a community champion. It recounts the paper’s crusade to change restrictive housing codes that blocked the original Levittown project, its Pulitzer-winning investigation of labor racketeer John DeKoning, and its early commitment to covering the booming, postwar transformation of the Island.
At the center of it all is Harry Guggenheim, who took over as publisher in 1963 after the death of his wife and Newsday founder, Alicia Patterson. Guggenheim delivers a closing monologue straight from the civic-minded heart of midcentury journalism, pledging that the paper will remain “fair as well as forceful” and will “endlessly fight the abuse of power in whatever high or low place it lurks.”
This is the Long Island your parents and grandparents knew—or aspired to know. And now, thanks to the Prelinger Archives and A/V Geeks, you can watch the full film and step back into that optimistic, pastel-colored version of the suburbs.
Watch the full video below:
