Islip.TV (MyLITV.com) Stands Alone Among Long Island News Sites

Year-old company is the only website to receive a 2008 Folio Award

MyLITV.com

Brentwood, NY-- Part “60 Minutes”, part guerrilla theater, a fifteen minute video produced by Islip.tv’s Waldo Cabrera was a complete hit among the judges at this year’s Folio Awards, presented by the Fair Media Council of Long Island.

The Folios are awarded for outstanding journalism in service to our community, and are respected and coveted among area journalists because entries are evaluated side-by-side with those of New York City TV and radio stations, newspapers, and internet news-providers: the Major League of Media. For Cabrera the win acknowledges his creation, Islip.tv, although just one-year old is among the best, and the only website to win a 2008 Folio Award.

Appropriately, Cabrera’s piece, “Where is Suffolk’s $300 Million?”, documents another contest between New York and Long Island, the issue of Albany Assemblymembers who would deny Suffolk residents millions of dollars in potential tax revenue by insisting the County provide hiring halls for undocumented workers, --while no such sites exist in their own districts.

Cabrera delivers an amusing but disturbing tour of political hypocrisy by calling several members of the State Assembly’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus and confronting staffers about the double-standard of their boss’s bid to force a hiring hall on Suffolk by refusing to authorize a tax bill, necessary to fund construction and maintenance of Suffolk County parks, roads and infrastructure.

Friday’s award ceremony at the Crest Hollow in Woodbury featured a keynote address by venerable White House correspondent Helen Thomas, and reflections about the life and work of the late, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Bob Greene from his Newsday colleague, Les Payne.

Cabrera says he’s pleased to be among the winners; including reporters from WCBS-AM, WNBC-TV, and Long Island’s WALK-FM, but it was a personal honor to have his award presented by Veronica Contreras and Jorge Ramos of Telemundo. More evidence, he says, of the growing role of Spanish-speaking Americans in community journalism. Other presenters included news anchors and personalities from New York’s CW11, and Fox 5 New York.

Cabrera shared his thoughts about those who evaluated the competition. “The Fair Media Council’s philosophy of having everyday people judge the media acknowledges we can be our own best watchdogs.” Cabrera says the philosophy of Islip.tv is to enable everyday people to report on our communities, “While many newspapers and websites have reports from the Associated Press or other sources, we help keep the news personal.”

To date, the “Where’s Suffolk’s $300 Million?” video has been viewed over 25,000 times on Islip.TV and over 19,000 times on MyLITV.com.

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