Dallas Gatewood III, a prolific former Newsday business reporter who chronicled how the economic downturn of the late 1980s devastated small farms on Long Island and across the country, has died at the age of 71.
Robert Brodsky of Newsday writes, “Gatewood joined Newsday in 1974 as beat reporter in the Town of Babylon as a member of the paper’s East End bureau in its Riverhead office. He spent most of his career on the business desk, covering real estate, the workplace and agriculture.
“Gatewood’s most memorable work detailed the struggles facing East End farmers from encroaching regional development, high production costs and dwindling federal aid. He traveled the country and to France and Belgium covering the ‘farm crisis’ during the second term of the Reagan administration, when a record number of properties were foreclosed on because of falling commodity prices and high interest rates.
“‘Dallas was one of the best writers the business desk ever had,’ said former Newsday reporter Tom Incantalupo, of Mount Sinai, one of Gatewood’s closest friends at the paper. ‘He worked really hard to produce good copy.’
“Newsday colleagues recalled Gatewood as the best dressed reporter in the newsroom, often impeccably attired in three-piece suits, no matter the assignment.”
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