What a year has brought: From Projo to Pell

One year ago today, I left The Providence Journal, where I had been a staff writer since 1981. I soon transitioned into the director of OceanStateStories.org, a new non-profit media outlet based at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center, where I had been a visiting fellow for several years.

Last day at The Providence Journal: Nov. 4, 2022.

After weeks of planning with Ocean State Stories co-founder Jim Ludes, Pell Center executive director, and a great staff at Pell, we launched Ocean State Stories on Feb. 7. Since then, we have published at least one major story and one Q&A every week – 40 weeks without interruption as of this writing.

Jim Ludes, left, and me at my Pell Center desk.

We have formed partnerships with print newspapers – notably John Howell’s Warwick Beacon, Cranston Herald and Johnston SunRise – and partnerships with other online media outlets including ecoRI News, RINewsToday and East Greenwich News. We offer all of our content for free to our partners, and they in turn offer theirs for free to us.

We publish every story and Q&A in both English and Spanish. I write many of our stories, with the rest provided by a growing corps of freelance writers – some well-established and others still journalism students in college. We pay for their work and I mentor the students and other young freelancers.

To see the types of stories we write, visit our mission page.

Along the way, we have become members of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Online News Association, the New England First Amendment Coalition, the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets (ANNO), and LION Publishers (Local, Independent, Online News).

All of this is possible thanks to the support of generous individuals and organizations who see our model – one similar to many others across the U.S. – as a big part of the future of news in an era when many legacy newspapers have disappeared and others, barely staffed, have become ghost papers. Our gratitude to all of our supporters today and in the future.

Our plan for Year Two is to grow – stay tuned for details of that!

I also must mention another initiative based at the Pell Center: Story in the Public Square, the multiple Telly-winning national PBS TV and SiriusXM show that has just been renewed for a 12th season. It starts in January. Since beginning weekly production in January 2017 as a show seen only regionally on our flagship station, Rhode Island PBS, we now are in more than 86% of the nation’s television markets with nearly 500 weekly broadcasts nationally – and we have taped more than 300 guests, including journalists, filmmakers, editorial cartoonists, scientists, musicians, advocates, bestselling fiction and non-fiction authors, poets, academics, still photographers, physicians, public health experts, actors, and Pulitzer-Prize winners. 

A shout-out to our great team at Rhode Island PBS, led by Chief Content Officer Jan Boyd and Production Manager Cherie O’Rourke!

In closing, let me express my hope that in all the work that flows from the Pell Center, we have helped advance the public good. That was the aim of the late Senator Claiborne Pell, for whom the center is named, and it’s ours, too.