Much has changed since Schneps Media founder Vicki Schneps launched her first newspaper, The Queens Courier, more than 40 years ago. As local news moved from
Much has changed since Schneps Media founder Vicki Schneps launched her first newspaper, The Queens Courier, more than 40 years ago. As local news moved from the page to the screen and then to social media feeds and mobile devices, Schneps Media has kept pace, exploding across the region with more products and ways to reach their audience.
“It’s always about the people,” Schneps said. “To educate and to inform and to have an impact in the neighborhoods that we serve is what we’re all about.” Open any one of Schneps Media newspapers, and you’ll find page after page of stories by and for the community. From board meetings to bike lanes, small businesses to sports, Schneps Media publications feature on-the-ground hyperlocal reporting about issues that affect readers closest to home, as well as in-depth profiles of the local leaders, luminaries and beloved members of the community.“People live in their neighborhood, they have an impact in their schools, their policing, their safety, and in their community quality of life,” Schneps said. “And that’s what people basically want to know about.” Today, Schneps Media has grown to include more than 101 properties, including local newspapers, magazines, websites, social media accounts, podcasts and more. In addition to neighborhood media operations in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island, Schneps Media publishes amNewYork, the only free daily newspaper distributed in the New York City subway system. When it comes to covering metro NYC at a hyperlocal level, Schneps Media has a local footprint that eclipses the distribution of the Daily News and New York Post combined. Beyond the Big Apple, Schneps Media publishes weekly newspapers in Nassau County, including the Port Washington News, Manhasset Press and Great Neck Record News, as well as the monthly Long Island Press magazine, whose history dates back 200 years. The company’s reach on Long Island extends all the way to the East End with Dan’s Papers, an iconic brand known for its local expertise and style that Schneps Media has extended into New York City and even Palm Beach. That’s still only a fraction of the company’s portfolio, which also includes New York Family magazines, Gay City News, Caribbean Life, Brownstoner and Spanish-language newspaper Noticia. All this during a time when local news has been on the decline across the nation. According to a 2025 report, The State of Local News, almost 40 percent of all local newspapers have vanished. Yet the impact on print journalism today, and Schneps Media’s reach, cannot be overstated by the readers. “I just met a man who told me he was so excited, because his son was in my newspapers for his sports achievement,” Schneps recalled. “This is priceless to people; nobody else is doing what we do, and that’s what’s special about us.”Schneps understood the power of community long before she even considered starting a newspaper. A mother of four, she became a fierce advocate for children with special needs after her daughter Lara’s experience at the notorious Willowbrook State School on Staten Island. “First, I had to overcome the obstacle of knowing that your child will never be more than a three-month-old developmentally and coping with that,” she said. “I was very blessed in that I lived in an apartment complex with other women who had children, and when they heard about Lara and what was going on at Willowbrook, they were happy to volunteer and to create an organization.” That organization would grow into the advocacy group Life’s WORC, which today is a $70 million agency serving people with developmental disabilities, according to Schneps. As the group marched and protested funding cuts and deteriorating conditions at Willowbrook, their work drew the attention of an up-and-coming young journalist named Geraldo Rivera. “He was snuck into Willowbrook by a group of doctors, and those doctors wanted him to reveal what was going on, the conditions of the people and what they were living in,” Schneps said. “And so Geraldo came with his cameras, and when he came, the whole world listened to what he had to say, because he said it with such passion.” With Geraldo’s spotlight, the “Willowbrook Wars” transformed the increased attention into a class action lawsuit that led to the facility’s closure. Schneps continued her advocacy and organization work, opening a group home in Little Neck and fighting for the right for similar homes to be placed in residential areas. That first group home was named the Geraldo Rivera Group Home to honor the role the journalist played in its establishment. “That’s really where the dream of having a role in the news business came from, because of Geraldo and the power of the press,” Schneps added. “What was going on at Willowbrook inspired me to start the newspaper.”Living in Northeast Queens, Schneps saw an opportunity to serve the growing number of neighbors owning their homes. These residents, she believed, relied on information about local schools, crime, development, business, transit, roads and more that just simply wasn’t available elsewhere. “That was the inspiration to actually open a newspaper that would cover the neighborhoods that we were serving, and that’s how the Queens Courier was born.” In 1985, Schneps connected with veteran journalist John Toscano, who had recently accepted a buyout from the Daily News. Working together on the Courier, they wrote every story, took every photo, and sold every advertisement. Some advertisers from the very first issue, like Lois Christie of Christie & Co. Salon, continue to advertise in Schneps Media properties today. Schneps and Toscano even worked with a typesetter and delivered the pages of their first issue to the printer in Long Island City personally at around 2 a.m. “They showed me the first run off the presses, and right there, the baby that was on the front cover was a black blob, and I screamed, ‘Stop the presses!’ And in fact, they did,” Schneps recalled. “When they bought me the second run, they said, ‘Well, madam, are you satisfied?’ And when I saw the front page was perfect, I said, ‘Yes, it’s a run.’” An early issue of the paper featured a photo of a burglar on its front page. Readers identified the robber from the photo, leading to his arrest. “That was a kind of a dramatic power that we had in terms of impact,” Schneps said. “But, our basic coverage is always the people in the neighborhood – whether it be from the schools, the school districts, the community boards – it was always about the people who live in the neighborhood. It still is.”Schneps would go on to buy out Toscano and add several other location publications to her growing portfolio, including a Spanish-language newspaper. However, the company’s growth really began to accelerate when her youngest son, Joshua Schneps, joined the company after beginning his career in finance. “ happened, and it was kind of like everybody evaluates what they’re doing around big moments in life,” he said. “I figured if I’m going to work the way I was working as an investment banker, I should work that way for my own business.” Leading the organization alongside his mother as CEO and co-publisher of Schneps Media, the company grew via acquisitions into Brooklyn, Long Island, and the Hamptons. Whereas many of these local news operations could have been gobbled up by large, remotely-managed companies , they now join a company that continues to be locally- and family-owned and operated. “What I’m proud of is that people come to us who want to retire, and they trust that we will take good care of their baby,” Vicki Schneps said of acquiring other legacy news outlets. “There’s a much more personal touch in family-owned news media, and so the fact that they trust us with their babies is a tremendous compliment to us; they understand that we will always be doing the right thing by the communities and the people who work for us.” Beyond the vast collection of media properties, Schneps Media also brings the community together for networking, business and community events. They began more than 30 years ago with the first Power Women event, inspired by the lack of representation Schneps saw at other networking events. In addition to Power Women, the company also celebrates leaders in Healthcare, the LGBTQ+ community, the Caribbean-American community and many more. “I love bringing people together and bringing businesses together so that they can grow their businesses as well.” Vicki Schneps said. “I feel that our business of news coverage is bringing people together through news coverage of all that they do … so that’s really a very natural part of our continuity of having us be, I call ‘the ultimate networking event,’ because we bring together people who are decision makers and people who want to know each other.”Schneps Media products have earned many industry awards, including being named the best local news organization in the Empire State by the New York Press Association. Vicki Schneps has been the recipient of countless honors and accolades, including running the Olympic torch through Queens for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But to this day, her proudest accomplishments are the closest to home: her four children and six grandchildren. In addition to her son Josh’s role as CEO and co-publisher, Vicki’s daughter Elizabeth runs the events division. Altogether, Schneps Media includes more than 250 employees, some of whom have been working alongside Vicki for four decades. “I think we could probably relate to a lot of the other businesses that we work with,” Josh Schneps said. “We relate to the fact that everyone’s working really hard to build their businesses, and as far as a family business, carrying on tradition, mission, values.” That tradition includes continuing the entrepreneurial spirit, local impact, and, of course, an unwavering commitment to the communities the company serves. “How you deliver the news may change, but the people living in the community are our beat, and that beat will always be about them,” Vicki Schneps said. “That’s why our theme, ‘We’re all about you,’ is as relevant today as it was when I first started the papers 40 years ago.”on platform moments before their deathKnicks starts a concern, but Mike Brown not changing starting 5 yetattacks increase in NYC
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