NewsBeat

January 2018 NewsBeat 23 The Community Newspaper Queen, of Queens ictoria Schneps-Yunis broke away from the sprawling marketing event she had organized and settled into a lobby, where there was a display showing the publications she owns. She grabbed the current issue of The Queens Courier, her flagship publication. It was more than 100 pages thick — hefty for a community weekly, especially as print publishing has imploded — but normal for The Courier, she said. A bad week is 80 pages, Ms. Schneps-Yunis said. "The rumors of print's demise are greatly exaggerated, at least with us." "Us" would be her Queens-based media empire, which dates back to 1985, when she started The Courier in her Bayside living room "with four children, a dream and a prayer and $250," she said. That first issue had news from northeast Queens and ads taken out by friends and businesses run by relatives. Over the years — fueled by her irrepressible personality and force- of-nature networking — she has acquired paper after paper. She has expanded coverage into all four boroughs, meaning New York City minus media- saturated Manhattan. "We're the real people," she said of the other boroughs, which along with Long Island is the terrain of Schneps Communications, the media and marketing company Ms. Schneps- Yunis now co-owns and runs with her son, Joshua Schneps, 38. This year, the company has added print versions of The Long Island Press and Brownstoner, a Brooklyn-based website. The company now operates some 20 print newspapers, 10 digital publications and employs about 90 staff members. "I started in Queens so it's local, local, local," said Ms. Schneps-Yunis, who publishes editions of The Courier devoted to individual ZIP codes and geared to individual apartment complexes. V "People still want to read about their neighborhood — they want to see their kid's picture in the paper," she said. "That's our niche: local.'' When a bank in Whitestone had a surveillance image of a robber, she put it on the front page of The Courier. A reader helped identify the thief, she said, "and the next week we ran it on the cover: 'Courier Reader Nabs Bank Robber.'" As Ms. Schneps-Yunis spoke, she sat in her office on Bell Boulevard in Bayside. She was dressed in a hot pink blazer trimmed with pearls and taking notes with a pen adorned with a large artificial flower on the end. On her desk was a pillow with the decree, "The Queen Reigns Here." Ms. Schneps-Yunis grew up in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, attended James Madison High School and earned degrees from New York University and Brooklyn College before becoming a schoolteacher. Her publishing career, she said, grew out of her protesting the Willowbrook State School, the notorious Staten Island home for developmentally disabled residents. Ms. Schneps-Yunis, whose daughter Lara was in Willowbrook's infant rehabilitation ward, led protests in the early 1970s against deplorable conditions in other wards. Ensuing exposés by Geraldo Rivera helped fuel outrage, and a subsequent federal lawsuit helped close Willowbrook. "To see the change, once Geraldo came in, that's when I realized the power of the press, and I said, 'I'd like to be in the news business,'" recalled Ms. Schneps-Yunis, who then helped start a group home in Little Neck, Queens, and an advocacy group called Life's WORC. Four years after the death of her second husband, Stuart Yunis, Ms. Schneps-Yunis is ready to date again — and for that reason would not reveal her age. "I'm single — I'm putting out the word," she said. "I love smart men. There's something very sexy about brains." To help keep her papers profitable, Ms. Schneps- Yunis began holding advertiser dinners that have expanded into wider marketing and networking events. The events are promoted as awards dinners for "Power Women," "Under 40" and such categories. Advertisers and others are presented with Vicki's — a heavy statuette resembling an Oscar or a Tony award. At her recent "Kings of Queens" event at the sprawling Terrace on the Park catering hall in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Ms. Schneps-Yunis was turned out in a long, bejeweled gold coat and matching pumps. As each businessman — the award is given only to men — introduced himself, Ms. Schneps- Yunis stood with a microphone, chiding some into selling themselves better and telling others to speak slower. An official at La Guardia Airport heralded the airport's ambitious renovation. "How many billion?" said Ms. Schneps-Yunis. Another businessman noted that Queens was the most ethnically diverse place in the country. "In the world!" corrected Ms. Schneps-Yunis. Then she had winners walk a runway to accept their Vicki's, escorted by a beauty queen representing El Correo, Ms. Schneps-Yunis's Spanish-language newspaper. As for her own prize, Ms. Schneps-Yunis is looking beyond a Vicki. "I won't stop until I win a Pulitzer," she said. By COREY KILGANNON "I won't stop until I win a Pulitzer," said Ms. Schneps-Yunis, center. Photo Credit — An Rong Xu for The New York Times

• Cover