» Résumé (PDF)

When Mike Sisak arrived to interview for a full-time staff position at Long-Islander Newspapers Inc. in March 2004, he carried a half-inch binder entitled “Words & Images.” Inside were clippings, photographic prints and a small self-written, self-designed and self-photographed high school football magazine, each of which served as striking exhibits of the journalistic versatility he possessed, barely a month past his 20th birthday.

Sisak was hired and put his interest in the various facets of journalism to work, fitting with the newspaper’s budget-conscious policy that instructed reporters to make their own photographs on most stories. Long days of reporting segued into nights (and early mornings) huddled at the office, at Starbucks and at home with his titanium PowerBook, honing the prose of stories on the never-ending cycle of weekly assignments. All while attending a full slate of classes at a local college.

It was Sisak’s first regular employment in the industry that he had grown fond of during a childhood filled with stacks of newspapers and trips to the newsroom (his father is a copy editor for a daily newspaper in New York).

When he left the paper, more than a year later, the binder was filled with new clips, from a diverse array of assignments. There was the series of stories on Coast Guard Petty Officer Nathan Bruckenthal, the son of a local police chief, who was killed by a suicide bomber in the Persian Gulf. There were the features on the high school athletes and all the game stories. On top of them all was the photocopy of his clear and cohesive report, written on deadline, detailing the explosion at a local car dealership. That piece and several of Sisak’s photographs earned awards in the New York Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest.

Sisak has been a student of photography since he was a freshman at Commack High School. He is a member of the National Press Photographers Association and has been shooting digitally since just after his high school graduation in 2002.

Sisak, also a member of the Society for News Design, used his design sense and Saturdays to help navigate the three-newspaper chain toward the August launch of a major, unified redesign. He translated the new look of the print edition into a redesign of the website, longislandernews.com.