This was the piece residents were greeted by on the front page of the inaugural Aug. 15, 1985 edition of Garden City Life:
Welcome to the first issue of Garden City Life. This new weekly community newspaper will be delivered by the United States Mail Service to every home in Garden City and Stewart Manor.
Garden City is a very special place and as such, it presents a very special challenge to the publisher of a newspaper to create a medium which properly reflects the activities and lifestyle, and which symbolizes the stature of the community.
We believe we can do this, and to make this promise a reality, we will be summoning all our knowledge, experience and expertise relating to community newspaper writing and printing graphics.
Although this new enterprise will be a part of the Long Island Community Newspaper Group, Garden City Life will be a “freestanding paper” with no sections common to the group included in it. For your information, the group includes such successful and highly regarded papers as The Great Neck Record, Glen Cove Record Pilot, Manhasset Press, Oyster Bay Enterprise Pilot, Port Washington News, Roslyn News, Westbury Times and The Long Islander, the Huntington Town paper founded by Walt Whitman in 1838.
Unlike the daily newspaper, the most important news in the community weekly is that about the social, charitable and service groups—news which for the most part, never appear anywhere else. So that we may properly publicize the organizations that interest you, we call upon you for assistance in submitting news releases.
The single strongest news coverage of our newspapers is county-wide scholastic and collegiate sports. That will be a regular feature, plus in-depth coverage of Garden City competitive and recreational sports. Again, news that will not be found in the dailies or, in fact, in very few weeklies.
We are looking forward with eagerness to publishing Garden City Life and we are confident that you will enjoy reading it.
Cordially,
Karl V. Anton, Jr., Publisher
Howard J. Finnegan, Editor-In-Chief
