About the Editor & Publisher
Beth Young began her newspaper career delivering The Sag Harbor Express in the early days of the internet. She was the primary reporter for The Express for nearly a decade and served as their interim arts editor in 2001. She covered schools and government, arts and environmental issues, the village’s bustling waterfront and the characters who dwell there, and social issues ranging from immigration to homelessness in the Hamptons.
She received her master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2007. While at Columbia, she reported on the changing face of immigration, the effect of trade deregulation on the garment industry, the construction of the Barclays Center and the debate over the Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel in Brooklyn, the fallout from the Iraq War, the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Her master’s project studied the great variation in the prosecution of hate crimes in different East End towns.
In 2007, Ms. Young interned with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Washington, D.C., where she wrote nationally syndicated articles about the upcoming 2008 presidential election, the Middle East peace process and Washington’s Jewish community.
She returned to the East End in 2008, where she covered East Hampton town government during the tumultuous administrations of Town Supervisors Bill McGintee and Bill Wilkinson. She also covered school consolidation and environmental issues ranging from the Speonk Solvent Plume to the Water Mill fish die-off at Mill Pond for the Press News Group.
From 2010 to 2013, she served as the Southold Town government reporter for a small newspaper on the North Fork. She is also a volunteer firefighter and EMT and a certified fish technician. Ms. Young was raised all over the North Fork.
About Our Staff
George Cork Maul, Creative Director
George Cork Maul is a composer, pianist and performance art specialist, who specializes in artistic collaborations on the East End. He studied music composition with Isaac Nemiroff at Stony Brook where he earned a B.A. and went on to do graduate work in electronic music with Bulent Arel and classical style with Charles Rosen.
After touring for several years and working as a studio musician, he began composing a wide range of serial and tonal music. His credits include modern songs, suites and dance pieces, contemporary operas, musicals, music for software and recently, pieces for string orchestra. His compositions have been performed in Italy, Ireland, Canada and the United States.
He can be seen performing at North Fork vineyards, Long Island libraries, art openings and other venues.
William Sertl, Culture Editor
William Sertl was the travel editor of Gourmet until its closure in 2009, and worked as an editor for Saveur and Travel & Leisure. A native of St. Louis, he escaped to New York City early and is now hiding out in Cutchogue, where he swims in the bay, bikes to King Kullen and does yoga.
Alison Boyd, Peconic Dish Editor
Alison Boyd-Savage worked in advertising before running a catering business in her native London. After moving to Long Island, she first settled in Bridgehampton, where she worked as a private chef. Five years later, the quiet beauty of the North Fork prompted a move to Southold. On weekends she loves to entertain, and can be found scouting the local farm stands for seasonal produce and visiting the markets for local fish, meat and eggs. Each month, she now shares some of these dishes on the back page of the East End Beacon.
Susan Tito, Gardenwise Editor
Susan Tito is a freelance writer and proprietor of Summerland Garden Design & Consulting (summerlandgardendesign.com). She earned a certificate in ornamental garden design from the New York Botanical Garden and is a member of the American Horticultural Society and Garden Communicators International. She can be reached at stito630@gmail.com.
Jinsoo Henry Oh, Reporter
Henry Oh is a North Fork native with a degree in Economics and Asian & Asian-American studies from Stony Brook University. He spent half his undergraduate years in Montreal, Quebec and has a penchant for smart city design and foreign cultures. When he’s not writing, you can find him playing a variety of music ranging from funky house to funky disco to funky hip hop at his local DJ gigs. Sometimes he ventures out and plays indie dance music and top 40. When he’s not out facilitating dancing, he pours wine at Laurel Lake Vineyard’s tasting room and rides his bike around town.
Kara Westerman, Feature Writer
Kara Westerman is a fiction author, teacher, oral history facilitator and writing workshop leader. She received her fiction MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and produces and hosts the podcast Phantom Hampton: Stories From Where The Rest of Us Live.
Glenn Jochum, Green Correspondent
Glenn Jochum grew up in Huntington, grew up more in Montauk, saw the world with the U.S. Navy and retreated to the last unruined paradise on Long Island, the North Fork. He’s written for the Navy and many Long Island newspapers, and was the managing editor of the Traveler-Watchman. He has written more than 200 songs, six CDs and is one-half of the folk-rock outfit The Earthtones.
Tim Kelly, Columnist
Tim Kelly is a former congressional press secretary and award-winning reporter, editor, columnist and photographer. He has lived on the North Fork for 30 years. For his mid-life crisis, he became a bagpiper.
Dave Davis, Columnist and Montauk Correspondent
Dave Davis teaches preschool for the Head Start program at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton. Two of his pieces, “Always Be the Water” and “All Things Considered,” appear in the 2016 anthology “On Montauk: A Literary Celebration.”
Isaac Greinke, Graphic and Web Design, Cartoons
Isaac Greinke is a 2014 graduate of Riverhead High School, where he specialized in drawing portraits of his cohorts and haunting the graphic design lab. He has designed websites, created stop motion animation and live films, and done extensive cartooning.
Gianna Volpe, Reporter & Photographer
Gianna Volpe is a multimedia reporter hailing from a little town along the Palisades of New Jersey.
She was named one of the New York Press Association’s four “Rookie Reporters of the Year” for her 2012 work with the Times/Review Newsgroup, where she served as the organization’s business, wine, health and real estate reporter, as well as Southold’s crime reporter.
She received her bachelor’s degree in journalism with a focus on photojournalism and minor in creative writing from the University of Missouri in 2010.
Avenue Smith, Youth Reporter Corps Leader
Avenue Smith is a tenth grader at Riverhead High School. She intends to attend Yale University. She is a voracious reader, a top-notch student and a chamber orchestra pro who loves to play the violin and piano.
Viola Smith, Youth Reporter Corps
Viola Smith is a seventh grader at Riverhead Middle School. She enjoys pickles and mischief and occasionally plays the viola in order to live up to her name. She also intends to open a bakery in Toronto when she is released from compulsory education.
Our Publisher Emeritus 2007-2021
Fireball Young‘s diverse holdings included steaks in many hamlets on the East End of Long Island. He is a native of the Kent Animal Shelter in Riverhead, where he briefly lived after he was caught sipping Slurpees behind the Riverhead 7-Eleven. He is greatly missed.