Steve Cuozzo

Steven D. Cuozzo (born January 17, 1950) is an American writer, newspaper editor, restaurant critic, real estate columnist, and op-ed contributor for the New York Post.

Early life Cuozzo was born in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, New York. He and his brother, Joseph G. Cuozzo, were children of Lillian (1922 - 1970) and Joseph A. Cuozzo (1916 - 1996), a Brooklyn electrical parts factory worker, and lived at 137 Hull St. In describing growing up in the Italian-Irish neighborhood of Ocean Hill near the J/Z line over Broadway, he noted in 2009, "I recall stoop sitting with neighbors and a happy blur of maternal grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins living in the building next door. I had my first pizza at a joint I recall as Jimmy's, on a corner lost to time a few blocks from home."

Cuozzo attended kindergarten at a Brooklyn Catholic school and, when he was about six years old, his family moved to North Babylon in Long Island, New York, where he would live for the next 17 years. In 1967, Cuozzo began attending Stony Brook University located in Stony Brook, New York. In 1971, Cuozzo graduated from Stony Brook University as an English major.

Career

1970s–1980s After graduating from Stony Brook University, Cuozzo began his first city job in 1972 as an administrative assistant at the Space for Innovative Development performing arts center. Cuozzo moved into a Riverside Drive apartment in Manhattan and described his new experiences as marking his "portal of entry into Manhattan," where he had his "first whiff of big-city glamour and grit."

On December 18, 1972, Cuozzo began working as a copy boy in the city room at 210 South Street at the New York Post. In a 2012 interview, Cuozzo noted about his entry-level job that "In those days, it literally meant, besides getting coffee for the editors, it meant carrying pieces of copy around." For the next four years, Cuozzo worked in the business run by Dorothy Schiff, an owner and publisher of the Post for nearly 40 years. Cuozzo later would characterize the Post during these four years as a "bastion of principled liberalism" that produced a "stunted broadsheet" with "the graphic appeal of a pothole" In 1976, liberal Cuozzo subsequently worked for Murdoch for many years and, in 1996, would be described as viewing Murdoch as "part Santa Claus, part William Randolph Hearst and always larger than life."

In August 1977, the core of Cuozzo's childhood Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill was destroyed by looters and arsonists during the New York City blackout of 1977.

In the fall of 1981, Cuozzo was promoted to assistant managing editor in charge of features. In addition to performing the duties of features editor, Cuozzo also was organizing contests and sweepstakes in the paper. As both Cuozzo and his wife had careers as writers, the book focused on how dual-career couples can enhance their relationships by promoting each other's careers. However, in early 1993, Cuozzo and Gerard Bray, the paper's previous interim editor, were appointed co-executive editors, with Marc Kalech, the former metro editor, being elevated to managing editor.

Hamill and 72 other staffers had been fired the previous Friday, with Hamill and 50 of the staffers being rehired on Wednesday, five days later. Cuozzo arranged to have rival newspaper, the Daily News, lend the Post film.

At the end of March, Rupert Murdoch signed an agreement to reclaim the Post. Cuozzo took the story to Times Books and, in April 1993, signed a contract with them to write an anecdotal memoir about the Post.

In October 1993, the Newspaper Guild labor union went on strike and Cuozzo was put in the position to help publish the paper with only editors and managers. At the time, he felt that the union failed to recognize that, without Murdoch, there would be no Post and no jobs for anyone at the Post. In the book, Cuozzo uses his experiences from when he joined he Post as a copy boy in 1972 through his mid-April 1996 receipt of the Post'''s new Sunday edition to present an anecdotal memoir that traces modern history at the then-195-year-old New York Post and describes its effect on America's news culture. In addition, throughout the book, he expresses his views, such as the Post "asserted the importance of human emotions in the affairs of the world" and the newspaper's "emphasis on individual accountability" instilled discipline in American society,

Cuozzo described the Post's Page Six gossip column as "a meaner brand of gossip, and more personal," saying it was used to settle scores "not unlike that of nuclear aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy: to intimidate Third World nuisances." He described former Post owner Abe Hirschfeld, who four years later would be convicted of soliciting murder, as "a squat bundle of free-floating hostility." In 2004, New Zealand-born Australian newspaper editor and journalist Frank Devine stated that the September 2003 book, The Murdoch Archipelago, drew extensively on Cuozzo's It's Alive! book for the Murdoch Archipelago's account of Murdoch's experiences with the Post.

In October 1996, Cuozzo appeared on Think Tank, a discussion program that aired on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and was hosted by Ben Wattenberg. The show, entitled Is Public Journalism, Journalism?, set out to discuss whether there was a new journalism that "sets out to go beyond just the facts and tries to shape the agenda." As a new restaurant critic, Cuozzo said that he would aim to "appeal to the great body of restaurant goers who are passionate about dining out without necessarily being food specialists." Cuozzo and the panel selected in their top 10, chefs including Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Nobu Matsuhisa, and Gray Kunz, as well as Christian Delouvrier, Mario Batali, Eric Ripert, and Alfred Portale. Cuozzo attributed the decline of the newspaper restaurant critic to the dilution of the power of the critic through the numerous websites and blogs that allowed people to express their opinions about their meals. a news program broadcast on the Fox News Channel.

2010s By March 2012, Cuozzo was writing his weekly "Realty Check" real estate column, was the Post's top restaurant critic, and edited the paper's Page Six gossip page. As of 2013, Cuozzo writes as a restaurant critic, real estate columnist, and op-ed contributor at the New York Post'' and lives with his wife Jane on the Upper East Side in New York.

Publications

Steve Cuozzo's first byline: reporting on the formation of Dennis Wayne's Dancers in the summer of 1975. Steve Cuozzo's first article as a restaurant critic: Steve Cuozzo's first weekly "Realty Check" real estate column: 1998 article co-written by Steve Cuozzo with wife Jane on their travels through Italy: