A transition two years ago led to Ocean State Stories...

 

Two years ago this month, I left The Providence Journal, where I had been a staff writer for four decades, to co-found and direct OceanStateStories.org, the free non-profit, non-partisan media outlet based at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center that is devoted to in-depth reporting on issues of importance to all of Rhode Island’s many communities. Our stories are told with data, expert input, and the personal experiences of residents. We launched in February 2023.

 

During 2024, we continued to expand our reach, adding new publication partnerships with Rhode Island PBS/The Public’s Radio and The New Bedford Light.

We redesigned our website, making it more user-friendly and adding a drop-down feature giving our audience the option to read in Arabic, Chinese (simplified), Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish.

We adopted a strict set of editorial standards.

We won a Silver Award winner in the third annual Anthem Awards competition in the “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – Public Service” category.

We remained committed to furthering the objectives of the many professional organizations to which we belong: the Society of Professional Journalists, the Online News Association, the New England First Amendment Coalition, the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets (ANNO), Education Writers Association, and LION Publishers: Local, Independent, Online News.

And we continued to support an outstanding and growing pool of freelance writers.

I’d like to thank our audiences, our partners, our benefactors, our Advisory Board, our great team at The Pell Center including our student interns, our web and comms team, and the many Rhode Islanders who have shared their stories – “stories that explore healthcare, education, public policy, socioeconomic and racial disparities and injustices, domestic violence, food and housing insecurities, the environment, agriculture, ageism, suicide prevention, mental health, immigration, veterans affairs, and developmental and intellectual disabilities, among others,” as we state on our site.

Here’s to 2025, another great year ahead!