The year was 1980. Ronald Reagan just became Commander in Chief.
That’s when South Shore Press reporter Robert Chartuk grabbed a notepad, gathered stories, and banged away on a typewriter as a reporter for the first time.
This young reporting cub kicked off his reporting career with the Oswego Messenger while still in college.
Graduating from the state university on a Friday, he was on the beat that Monday with Suffolk Life Newspapers.
Bob has seen it all and covered it all. He’s a trusted reporter who knows our community like the back of his hand. One of the biggest stories was the Shoreham nuclear plant fiasco.
If this seasoned veteran had one dollar for every board meeting, hearing, dinner, ceremony, chamber event, protest, drill, rally, civic gathering he covered as a reporter, he’d be a billionaire.
Recently, the big stories Bob covered include the Gilgo murders, the Babylon Body Parts case, international conflicts, and state and county government.
Chartuk is such a solid veteran of all things reporting and government, he’s also served “on the other side of the microphone.”
Bob was recruited to work for the U.S. Department of Commerce, New York State Assembly and Senate, and the Town of Brookhaven.
Serving as a spokesman for the NOAA Corps, Chartuk was a media contact for the TWA Flight 800 disaster, the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, and the tragedy surrounding the 35th President’s son, which he wrote a book about: “John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Me: The Other Side of Camelot.”
The work features his on-the-scene perspective of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and blizzards when he was assigned to the National Weather Service.
Chartuk enjoys writing about the natural world, particularly the waters surrounding his Long Island home. He is currently working on a book about his adventures “on the water, under the water, and over the water,” having spent a lifetime swimming, boating, fishing, diving, and surfing in the Atlantic and the island’s bays and inland waterways.
He’s been a world traveler pursuing his hobbies and sharing stories from up and down the East Coast, as well as Antigua, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, California, Costa Rica, Grand Cayman, Grand Turk, Hawaii, Mexico, St. Maarten, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas.