When WCBS/880 AM had final approval for its news radio format in August, among the disappointed fans was the station’s former “voice of Long Island.”

Ellen Mitchell, 86, was a reporter for the station on Long Island from 1980 to 1995. She covered some of the area’s biggest stories, including the Amy Fisher case of “Long Island Lolita,” the murder of Kelly Ann Tinyes in 1989 and the Long Island case. Mass shooting on Island Rail Road in 1993. She had her own signature: “On Long Island, this is Ellen Mitchell.”

Mitchell, who now splits her time between Huntington and her home of 32 years in Orient, said she has nearly 1,000 6-by-9-inch shorthand pads that she filled with notes while crisscrossing Long Island as a freelance reporter for two decades. She was such an important local staple that then-Gov. Mario Cuomo once called her during a family dinner to ask if she would join his public relations staff; She said she rejected the offer.

“She was a pioneer for many of the other women who followed her because she broke into a field at a time when there weren’t many women doing what she did,” said her eldest daughter, Elisa McDonagh, 61, a retiree. . doctor in Centerport. “She ended up following a passion she enjoyed and was a role model for other women and for her daughters to follow the path that brings you joy.”

PROFESSIONAL PATH

In fact, Mitchell, whose maiden name is Mayer, said she “desperately wanted to be an architect,” but her parents said that’s not what women do. When she graduated from Freeport High School in 1956, she got engaged and went to college to become an art teacher. It didn’t go well.

“I hated teaching with a vengeance,” Mitchell said of his two years at his high school alma mater.

By then she was married to Paul Mitchell, a doctor. She said she happily left teaching and settled into married life and raised her three children. But Mitchell, who now has eight grandchildren and a great-grandchild on the way, said that when her youngest son was ready for elementary school in 1975, she was bored.

That girl was Gail Mitchell, now 53, an art curator living in Brooklyn. She remembers her mother telling a story about how she was invited to play cards with other housewives in their Melville neighborhood. “He said they were talking about a chandelier for an hour and he had to apologize. “I think she just needed to be active in a different way than maybe other local moms needed.”

Ellen Mitchell recalled the moment things changed for her. “This was back in the day when women were mainly in the kitchen, and I heard a woman’s voice reporting the local news. And I said, ‘I can talk better than her.’ “

So he headed to radio station WGSM, which was then based in Huntington. “I told them, ‘I don’t know anything about reporting. I don’t really know anything about being a writer, but I’m a loudmouth, so I’d like to help out in your radio news department.’ He said he added the magic phrase that sealed his job: “And I’ll do it for free.”

In his five years there, he said he covered the Nassau and Suffolk legislatures, local government meetings and homicides. He occasionally sent stories from Long Island to WNEW in New York City. Then he heard that WCBS/880 was looking for someone to cover the area. Mitchell started there in February 1980 as a freelance reporter covering breaking events, government, politics, crime, courts and human interests, primarily on Long Island and occasionally in New York City.

STARTING WITH A BRIEF

Mitchell said he never forgot the advice a WGSM reporter gave him: The most important part of every story was its introduction, known as lede. “He said, Ellen, if you learn anything here, it is to grab whoever is listening to you with the finger; The rest is sauce.”

And so, witty banter became his signature opening lines. On the job he learned to be a journalist, meeting detectives and police chiefs so he could get quotes and leads on stories. He carried a tape recorder and microphone and, using a pay phone or occasionally a random homeowner’s phone, would send his reports to WCBS.

Every day was exciting, Mitchell said. He recalled working in the city bureau and covering a hostage situation. He entered a phone booth on the deserted street to do a live report a short distance from the action.

“I’m in the middle of the report and suddenly the anchor bursts in and says, ‘Ellen, get out of the phone booth. You are in the line of fire. The police just called. “And he added with delight: “That was good radio.”

She said she was among the first on the scene when Fisher was taken to Nassau County police headquarters after shooting the wife of her boyfriend, Joey Buttafuoco, and soon found herself meeting Buttafuoco and his family. LIRR killer Colin Ferguson called her from jail offering her an exclusive on-air interview, which she says the station rejected. Mitchell said she was disappointed because she thought it would have attracted a lot of radio listeners.

MINEOLA PRESS ROOM

He was based in the Mineola newsroom at the Nassau County Courthouse, along with reporters from media outlets such as Newsday, Channel 11, News 12, Daily News, The Associated Press, New York Post and UPI.

“We were a very united group. “Everyone on Long Island: the Suffolk and Nassau police departments, executives, officers, politicians, detectives, public relations people from companies were calling us all the time, stopping by and talking to us,” he said. “It was really a clearinghouse.”

It was the place to be, agreed Vicki Metz of Bayville, assignment editor for Channel 7’s “Eyewitness News” from 1987 to 2009. “You knew you’d really make it if you worked in that room. There really was camaraderie. . . I loved working there.”

Also in the newsroom was Irving Long, 85, of Rockingham, North Carolina, a Newsday reporter who covered politics. “In my opinion, Ellen was the number one radio reporter. . . She was tough. She was competitive. He was difficult to beat. “She is a great human being, not just a great reporter,” he said.

Another Newsday reporter and longtime friend, Shirley Perlman, 86, said Mitchell was called “the voice of Long Island CBS because the variety of what she reported on was astonishing. Most journalists specialize in one area (for me it was covering the courts in Mineola), but what happened on Long Island, Ellen covered it.”

Perlman, who retired from Newsday in 2003 and now lives in Bondville, Vermont, said that although they were competitors, they met every morning at 5:30 before work to run three miles. They still talk almost every day.

Mitchell’s husband, Paul, who died in 2022, had a busy schedule with his medical practice in Plainview, so for much of her radio career she juggled her reporting and her children’s schedules. All three said they have fond memories of their careers.

McDonagh, a mother of four, said it was always exciting to hear her mother’s name on the radio. “Whether he was in the eye of the storm or he was interviewing someone, he had an idea of ​​where he was, based on where he said he was reporting from.”

His son, Jim Mitchell, 60, of Irvington, New York, recalled riding on the press float after one of the Islanders’ Stanley Cup victories. But what left an indelible impression on him was going to court with his mother, particularly the day in 1982 when five men were indicted for a disturbance at the Seacrest Diner in Old Westbury. “I liked seeing the lawyers in court,” he said.

While she doesn’t remember this, Mitchell said the teen turned to her and told her he was going to do that one day. He is now a high-profile criminal defense attorney at Ballard Spahr LLP who often answers reporters’ questions for his clients.

“There weren’t many moms who did that kind of thing back then. . . “Now I deal with journalists all the time and it gives you a very different perspective and an appreciation of how difficult it is,” he said.

Because she was the youngest, Gail Mitchell said she spent most of her time at work with her mother, often going to the media room after school. She met what she called “the cast of characters” and remembers a bulletin board where reporters posted alternative headlines that could never be published.

A favorite memory was when her mother took her to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey at dawn to fly in a helicopter with WCBS traffic reporter Neal Busch. “I had my camera and I sat next to him while he reported live,” she said. “I still have the photos I took that morning.”

PRIZES AND A BOOK

Mitchell won several awards for his on-air news coverage, including from the New York State Broadcasting Association for excellence in spot reporting on the fatal Grucci fireworks explosion in 1983 and in 1990 for the crash of Flight 52. from Avianca in Cove Neck. But his long career at WCBS ended due to a change in his employment situation.

Mitchell said she was never on staff at the station and was instead paid as a freelancer. He also wrote articles for The New York Times and Newsday, and shared information on stories with other radio stations. In 1995, he said WCBS asked him to become a staff member, which meant stopping writing for anyone else and having the freedom to cover any stories he wanted. So he quit at age 57. (In a 1995 Daily News article, a WCBS official declined to comment on the issue.)

Mitchell went on to do advertising for North Shore Health System for five years and became a regular contributor to Newsday, including writing a weekly column, “Connections,” for this section. She also wrote a book related to one of those articles, “Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child,” about women whose children had died. It was published by St. Martin’s Griffin in 2004.

Mitchell officially retired from freelancing about 15 years ago. About her time as a radio reporter, she said: “I could never do it today. The schedule was crazy. “I don’t have that kind of energy to be so busy and go on and on.”

Currently, she said she is focused on photography and her children almost persuaded her to write a book about her years at the Mineola printing plant. Of the final days of WCBS/880, he said: “It broke my heart to know it had closed. They really knew what they were doing with the news, so I’ll miss that. “I think of my time there as the glory days of radio news.”