NORWALK, Conn., August 13, 2009 -- At a dinner on September 24 at the Garden City Hotel, Long Island Business News will honor 50 Long Islanders (around the age of 50) who have demonstrated leadership in business, mentoring and support for Long Island's not-for-profit organizations, as well as commitment to the communities that support the region's businesses. George Giokas (Bohemia), Chairman of HealthDay, will be honored in this inaugural class. Winners were nominated and selected by a judging committee established by Long Island Business News.

Giokas worked as an award-winning investigative reporter, top executive editor at Newsday, and in between as an entrepreneur with his own award-winning weekly newspaper in Centre County, Pennsylvania. He returned to Long Island in 1991 and back to Newsday where he was one of the top business editors until he launched StaffWriters Plus, Inc., a business that provides editorial and staffing support to some of the region's largest companies. In 2001, he saw an opportunity to grow a company, and in a few short years with the help of private investment and a dedicated staff of professionals, assumed the role of Chairman of HealthDay, which is now the largest producer and distributor of health news in the country.

In addition to having written the "Small Talk" column for Newsday and the "Dear Diary" column for BusinessWeek on-line, Giokas recently wrote "Everyday Matters" in the NeighborNews that had a circulation of half a million. Giokas has appeared on scores of panels on journalism and on careers in journalism, and he currently teaches News Literacy in the journalism program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Active in the community, Giokas is a present and founding member of the Long Island Software & Technology Network (LISTnet), a member of the New York Association of Temporary Services; a member of the Long Island Fair Media Council where he serves as a judge for FOLIO and as a panelist at Connection Day; a founding member and board vice president of the Strictly Students Film Festival; a mentor with the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Organization; and a member of the Smithtown Central School District's Industry Advisory Board.

Giokas is a graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School and Long Island University where he began his career in journalism as editor of the college newspaper, Seawanhaka. He also graduated from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, where he honed his craft as a screenwriter.

-----

HealthDay is the largest producer and distributor of health news in the country, and provides a daily health news service for both consumers and physicians. Its consumer health news service (www.healthday.com) appears on more than 5,000 Web sits such as Yahoo!, MSN, iVillage, Forbes.com, ABCNews,com, US News & World Report, as well as on hundreds of sites for hospitals and hospital groups and in print publications across the country.

HealthDay also produces Physician's Briefing, a news service updated twice daily providing a minimum of 15 articles a day across 27 different medical specialties; provides custom content for major news organizations and health and hospital sites on the Internet; and most recently launched HealthDay TV, a 60-second news broadcast of essential health information, which is already being sold to major outlets and the US government on health information sites.

In 2006, HealthDay was honored by the New York Enterprise Small Business Report as Business of the Year in Sales Growth.