[3] In 2004, citing personal reasons, he resigned as CEO of the financial information and document management firm Bowne & Co, as well as from his position as a member of the New York State Board of Regents.
Johnson was responsible for Newsday's wholesale hiring of top journalists away from the city's other dailies; at one point its roster of columnists and critics was arguably the most prestigious in the United States.
While at Newsday, Johnson was also the driving force behind a series of ill-fated campaigns to try to promote economic growth on Long Island, and to reduce the political influence of environmentalists and local civic associations, which he regarded as obstructionist.
His close relationship with the noted developer Wilbur Breslin raised some eyebrows, particularly when the two men travelled together to Washington to lobby for relaxation of real estate lending regulations, which had become much stricter following the Saving and Loan debacle.
Also controversial was Johnson's collaboration with Howard J. Rubenstein's public relations firm, which was then engaged in composing attacks on environmentalists on behalf of a coalition of Long Island real estate developers and construction labor union leaders, several of whom were indicted for homicide.
[5] Robert M. Johnson, of Huntington, Long Island, New York was elected to a five-year term as the Regent for the Tenth District (Nassau and Suffolk Counties) effective April 1, 1995, and re-elected to serve through March 31, 2005.
Regent Johnson later served as the chairman and CEO of Bowne & Co., Inc., an international leader in supporting the information and document management needs of the financial services industry, headquartered in Manhattan.
He also has served as a director of the Long Island Philharmonic, the New York Blood Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the South Street Seaport Museum, the Advertising Council, the Audit Bureau of Circulations, and Hofstra University.
[16] But they also appear as spokesmen and promoters for Mob business interests, as when Wilbur Breslin's attorney Herb Balin was previously working for the notorious John Cody of Local 282.
During Johnson's years at the helm of Newsday, the ABLI-BTC "Business-Labor Coalition" was promoted in editorials as a movement to save Long Island from the stranglehold of "NIMBY" environmental groups and civic associations.
Newsday's coverage of this extraordinary event was blandly uninformative; the pertinent facts were barely mentioned, and then only in a subjective column by Paul Vitello[21] a day after the main story.
It's also possible they could have been referring to the scrupulously objective in-depth stories by star business reporter Greg Steinmetz, but he may have already left for the Wall Street Journal by the time of Johnson's negotiations with the ABLI.