BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — In the course of a water polo season, hundreds of stories are written about the who/what/when/where/how/why, but sometimes the peripheral individuals who make the game work are lost in the keystrokes. To correct this issue, the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA)/Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference (MAWPC)/Northeast Water Polo Conference (NWPC) will attempt to point out the people who are neither in the water nor on the bench as coaches who make the sport of water polo on the collegiate level possible.
First on the list comes from the ranks of America’s Most Wanted, COPS and the diabolical world of Saturday Night Live – among other television programs.
Dr. Jack Breslin is the faculty moderator for the Iona College men’s and women’s water polo programs. Breslin travels with the team to all games, working directly with head coach Brian Kelly to ensure that all the student-athletes excel both in and out of the pool.
A Long Island native, Breslin and his family moved to the Mid-Hudson Valley in 1961, where he decided to study to be a Roman Catholic priest, a dream he pursued for nine years. During that time, he graduated high school from St. Mary’s Seminary, North East, Pa, in 1969, and received his bachelor of arts degree in philosophy from St. Alphonsus College, Suffield, Conn., in 1974. Leaving the seminary three years before ordination, Breslin decided to “see the world,” traveling through Europe, Central America and the United States, while working as a bank teller, security guard, convenience store manager and summer camp swimming instructor.
His first professional article, also his first unsolicited freelance effort, was published in the Hartford Advocate, a Connecticut weekly, followed by numerous freelance pieces in such publications as Family Circle, Travel Holiday, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Journal News, Hudson Valley magazine, and several other newspapers and magazines.
Deciding to pursue a career in media, Breslin earned his master’s in journalism from the University of Georgia in 1979. He worked two years as a reporter and feature writer for the Kingston Daily Freeman, a small newspaper in upstate New York. From the newspaper world, Breslin moved into network television publicity, beginning with NBC in 1981, where he helped publicize the premiere of “Late Night With David Letterman,” daytime dramas, “Saturday Night Live,” and dozens of miniseries and TV movies in New York City and Los Angeles.
When the Fox Broadcasting Company started up, he was hired as one of its pioneers to launch what is now the fourth network. Among the many shows he publicized there were “COPS,” and “America’s Most Wanted (AMW),” about which he wrote a best-selling Harper paperback in 1990.
With that interest in AMW and the criminal justice system, Breslin left his Fox managing duties to become publicity director for AMW in Washington, DC, until 1993. Since then, he has enjoyed working as an adjunct professor, freelance writer and public relations consultant for numerous clients in business, entertainment, politics and education. In 1997, Breslin enrolled in the doctoral program at the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where he taught courses in public relations, media law and media ethics.
In 2001, Breslin joined the Department of Mass Communication at Iona College after completing his doctorate, and is now a tenured associate professor. He has been extensively interviewed and published about his primary research area, the media’s treatment of crime victims from the legal and ethical perspectives, which was the focus of his doctoral dissertation.
His other research interests are teaching media ethics, sports journalism, and journalism history, particularly presidential press relations. He is currently writing a textbook for combined media law and ethics courses, which he currently teaches at Iona, in addition to the introductory mass communication course and sports journalism. Since 2015, Breslin has coordinated the department’s master of arts program in public relations. Among his Iona service activities are moderating four Iona in Mission trips, including three to Africa. In 2012, he received the college’s Hugh J. McCabe Memorial Award for Social Justice.
