Paul Vitello (born 1950) is an American journalist who has written for a variety of publications. He wrote an award-winning news column for '' Newsday'' from 1982 to 2005. He went on to write for the religion and obituary sections for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' and has taught at Stony Brook University's School of Journalism.

Biography

Vitello was born in Chicago in 1950. He grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He graduated from the

High School of Music & Art The High School of Music & Art, informally known as "Music & Art" (or "M&A"), was a public specialized high school located at 443-465 West 135th Street in the borough of Manhattan, New York, from 1936 until 1984. In 1961, Music & Art and the High ...

(now

LaGuardia High School Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, often referred to simply as LaGuardia, is a public high school specializing in teaching visual arts and performing arts, located near Lincoln Center in the Lincoln Square n ...

) and

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

in Hartford, Connecticut. Before joining the ''Times'' staff in 2005, he wrote about Long Island life for '' Newsday'' for 23 years. His column received the Meyer Berger Award from Columbia University, was named the best newspaper column of the year in New York three times by the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

, and won ''Newsday''s Publisher's Award four times. He shared in ''Newsday''s 1985 John Hancock Award for excellence in business writing and its 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting for its coverage of the crash of

TWA flight 800 Trans World Airlines Flight 800 (TWA800) was a Boeing 747-100 that exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York, on July 17, 1996, at about 8:31pm. EDT, 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Internationa ...

. His work was featured in the

American Society of Newspaper Editors The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) was a membership organization for editors, producers or directors in charge of journalistic organizations or departments, deans or faculty at university journalism schools, and leaders and faculty of ...

' ''Best Newspaper Writing 2001: The Nation's Best Journalism,'' published by

The Poynter Institute The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Netw ...

On most days, I gather information for a story just as I would as a reporter; but when I write the column, it's the subtext I'm trying to get right.... Subtext is, according to my definition, the part of the story that none of the players ever mentions. It's the election politics in the prosecution of a murder case.... It can be in the way two people look at each other across a courtroom before one testifies against the other. For me, subtext is where the action is in any story.

Vitello began his career reporting for the ''

Kansas City Times The ''Kansas City Times'' was a morning newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri, published from 1867 to 1990. The morning ''Kansas City Times'', under ownership of the afternoon '' Kansas City Star'', won two Pulitzer Prizes and was bigger than its p ...

'', the '' Knickerbocker News'' in

Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York C ...

and the

City News Bureau of Chicago City News Bureau of Chicago (CNB), or City Press (1890-2005), was a news bureau that served as one of the first cooperative news agencies in the United States. It was founded in 1890 by the newspapers of Chicago to provide a common source of local ...

. As a freelance writer in Rome in 1979, he covered news from the Vatican for the Religion News Service. Vitello is featured in the 2016 documentary '' Obit.'', about the complex work of ''The Timess obituary writers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vitello, Paul 1950 births 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists American columnists American expatriates in Italy American male journalists American writers of Italian descent Journalists from Illinois Kansas City Times people Living people Newsday people Obituary writers People from the Lower East Side Stony Brook University faculty The New York Times writers Trinity College (Connecticut) alumni Writers from Manhattan