Veteran Press & Sun-Bulletin Reporter Jeff Platsky Retires

Reporter Jeff Platsky taking notes at a Binghamton planning commission meeting on March 9, 2020. Photo: Bob Joseph/WNBF News

Journalist Jeff Platsky has retired after writing several thousand business and investigative stories for the Press & Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton.

Platsky returned to the newsroom on Lewis Road in the Choconut Center section of the town of Union Tuesday. It was one of the few times he's been there since last March when reporters started working remotely because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Platsky reminisced as he packed up some of the possessions he'd collected since joining what was then The Evening Press in January 1981. He said "the newsroom is a special place."

Platsky enjoyed a virtual retirement celebration with current and former colleagues via Zoom Monday afternoon. He's looking forward to a more traditional get-together when health guidelines make that possible.

Platsky's retirement is taking effect almost exactly 40 years after his name first appeared in the Binghamton newspaper. His first story - with the byline "Jeffrey Platsky" - was something he wrote as he applied for the job. It ran in The Evening Press on December 10, 1980.

When he was hired by the Press, Platsky started out as the paper's Oneonta bureau reporter.

Prior to that, he was a reporter for the The Star-Herald in Presque Isle, Maine and for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise in Saranac Lake.

READ: Jeff Platsky's thoughts after "45 years practicing the proud profession of journalism."

Jeff Platsky wrote about his work as a journalist in a newspaper column that appeared on December 1, 2020.