The Local News Revolution in Rhode Island

Bill Bartholomew lives in a former industrial building on the south side of Providence. 

His apartment has high ceilings, a wide-open floor plan and wires that snake along the floor. A drum kit sits in one section of the room, not far from an upright punching bag. Along the walls are shelves stacked with books, records, plants, barbells, cardboard boxes and plastic crates filled with music equipment. On one side of the apartment is a narrow hallway crammed with miscellaneous items: a skateboard, a ladder, an amplifier. On the other side, a faded poster reads “TURTLES AND TORTOISES.”

If it looks like an artist’s loft, well, that’s because it is. Bartholomew is a touring musician who recently released an EP of synth-infused rock called Icy. He frequently hosts concerts in the space. And among the items stored here are large-scale paintings by his wife, the multimedia artist Gabriela Rassi.  

And yet this apartment is also a functioning newsroom. 

In a corner cordoned off by black curtains sits a desk, a computer, a camera and a microphone, where Bartholomew hosts his podcast, Bartholomewtown. Since its launch in 2018, the show has released more than 700 episodes on subjects ranging from the Washington Bridge crisis to the COVID pandemic to the state’s 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Past visitors to the loft include U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Attorney General Peter Neronha. (For years, Bartholomew has also been a producer and fill-in host at AM630 WPRO.)

On the day I visit, there is still a table made from a large door perched on two sawhorses. It is a relic of the 2023 special-election primary race that followed Congressman David Cicilline’s resignation, when Bartholomew hosted a debate between the eight candidates for the First Congressional District seat. To accommodate the group — which included the contest’s eventual winner, Gabe Amo — Bartholomew salvaged the door from his building’s trash and covered it with a black plastic tablecloth. 

Bartholomew conducts field reporting, too. In 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, he was covering an abortion-rights rally at the State House when a scuffle broke out nearby. During the fracas, an off-duty Providence Police officer running for state Senate was seen on video punching his campaign opponent, Jennifer Rourke. (The officer, Jeann Lugo, was later acquitted of charges of simple assault.) 

The video was Bartholomew’s. It rocketed across the internet, with mentions in stories by NBC News and The Washington Post. A CNN article noted, “Video shot by Bill Bartholomew and shared with CNN appears to show the moment Lugo allegedly punched his then-state Senate opponent at the abortion-rights rally Friday evening.”

For decades, the prevailing mood about journalism in the U.S. has been bleak. Thousands of newspapers have closed. (After the internet and social media arrived, ad revenue dried up, classified and personal ads migrated elsewhere, and younger folks preferred smartphones to printed media.) Waves of layoffs continually rock the industry. Across the country, “news deserts” — a term for regions or communities with limited access to reputable news coverage — have proliferated, while misinformation and conspiracy theories spread at dizzying speeds online. 

And there are plenty of reasons to worry about the Ocean State’s news ecosystem. The Providence Journal — though it still produces excellent reporting — is a shadow of its old self. In 2022, a Boston Globe article noted, “The Journal used to have a dozen reporters in its Warwick bureau alone; now it has barely a dozen reporters total.”

In 2014, the state lost its long-running alternative weekly, The Providence Phoenix. Since then, other newspapers have merged (The Call and The Times) or closed (The Coventry Courier, The Chariho Times). Meanwhile, WJAR has faced scrutiny over its parent company, Sinclair, which bought the station in 2014. At one point a distressed former employee wrote in The Providence Journal, “With its penchant for conservative politics well-documented, the company is attempting to use its local stations like NBC 10 to advance its own political agenda.” 

And yet amidst the gloom, there is another story to tell about local journalism — a tale of growth, experimentation and new platforms that emphasize hyperlocal reporting. Indeed, if you shift your gaze from the legacy outlets to online news startups, you might say that Rhode Island’s journalism world is in the midst of a growth spurt. 

In addition to Bartholomew’s show, the state now has locally owned news organizations covering health care (ConvergenceRI), the environment (ecoRI News), general news (GoLocalProv) and multiple cities and towns, including Newport (What’s Up Newp) and East Greenwich (East Greenwich News). 

In one recent year alone — 2023 — three news organizations launched: the Salve Regina-based outlet, Ocean State Stories; the policy-focused Rhode Island Current; and the hyper-local news startup, The Providence Eye. That same year, Steve Ahlquist, a fixture of the state’s progressive journalism scene, launched an online newsletter which brings in more subscriber revenue than he’s ever made from journalism. 

I recently caught up with this group of committed, indefatigable folks who, in this uncertain and tumultuous era, are making sure that the Ocean State doesn’t descend into darkness. And what I learned gave me — a guy as weary and cynical as any veteran journalist — a welcome jolt of hope and inspiration.

Once upon a time, you needed resources to start a news outlet. A newspaper needed a printing press and delivery trucks. Radio required microphones and a transmitter. A TV station needed a studio, cameras and technical staff. 

Nowadays, there are far fewer barriers to entry. To get up and running in journalism, you don’t need much more than a smartphone, a laptop and an internet connection. In earlier eras, newsrooms hummed with activity: phones ringing, keyboards clacking, TVs and police scanners squawking, reporters coming and going. Today, many upstart news organizations don’t even have offices. 

And there are other things about these outlets that might surprise you.

Among the state’s online news orgs, you’ll find more collaboration than cutthroat competition. Visitors to ecoRI’s homepage will find a prominent section titled, “From Our Partners,” with stories originally published by The Providence Eye, East Greenwich News and other publications. At Ocean State Stories, the site’s “About” page features a long list of partners that includes traditional outlets — the Johnston Sun Rise, Warwick Beacon, Rhode Island PBS/The Public’s Radio — and online contemporaries alike. (This spirit is perhaps rubbing off on older news orgs: In November, WPRI and The Boston Globe’s Rhode Island bureau announced a new partnership.)

Many of these new outlets also operate on a nonprofit basis, which places them in line with the broader ascendance of such news outlets. Today, nonprofit news organizations across the country include ProPublica, the Texas Tribune, the Baltimore Banner and two successful outlets on either side of Rhode Island: the New Haven Independent, and The New Bedford Light, which recently hired former Providence Journal Executive Editor Karen Bordeleau. 

New funding models bring new relationships with audiences. Whereas The Providence Journal and Boston Globe still use a paywall — where online visitors get access to a limited number of articles, or none at all, before being prompted to pay for a subscription — nearly all local news sites publish their content for free. Some receive grant funding and solicit donations to pay the bills. East Greenwich News — which boasts of being “Free & Community Funded” at the top of its site — has a merch shop, which sells T-shirts stamped “Came for the Police Log…Stayed for the News.” Perhaps the most creative funding model belonged to ecoRI News, which, in its early years, offered subscription-based residential compost collections.

Yet another notable departure from old-school journalism is the participants’ variety of backgrounds.

Certainly, there are plenty of old-school veterans. ConvergenceRI founder Richard Asinof previously worked at multiple newspapers, including the Providence Business News. EcoRI’s editor Bonnie Phillips spent decades working for newspapers, including The Call and the Hartford Courant. Before she launched East Greenwich News, Elizabeth McNamara worked as a copy editor for The Providence Journal and an editor for the online news site, Patch. And Ocean State Stories’ founder/editor G. Wayne Miller started the site after spending forty years at The Providence Journal.

But many players followed unusual paths into the news business. After college, Bill Bartholomew spent years in New York City, working various temp jobs, playing shows in Brooklyn’s artist scene and even busking in subway stations. In the decades before Debbie Schimberg launched The Providence Eye, she founded a charter school, ran a socially conscious chewing gum company, and started the Southside Community Land Trust. 

Steve Ahlquist owned a comic book shop and worked as a manager at various Borders bookstore locations before trying his hand at reporting. When he managed Borders shops, he learned the systems so well that he could solve problems before they arose. And when he pivoted to journalism, he thought that if he could approach the State House the same way, “then you could suddenly see all the cracks and mistakes and problems and maybe write about it in a different way.”

So he did. And, years later, in 2021, the NAACP’s Providence branch gave him an award named after the trailblazing civil rights journalist Ida B. Wells.

As noteworthy as these upstarts are, it’s important to keep things in perspective. The Providence Eye is not poised to replace the Journal or the Globe any time soon. Bill Bartholomew’s podcast, however prolific, is not necessarily a substitute for the daily coverage from TV news channels, The Public’s Radio or community newspapers like The Valley Breeze and Warwick Beacon. In many cases, these new outlets act as a supplement to, rather than a full substitute for, existing legacy news orgs. And, overall, these journalists still make up only a fraction of the reporters in the state today. 

And when I spoke with folks in this world, I came to appreciate the challenges involved in these projects. The flipside to being a nimble digital outlet is the fragility of limited funding and personnel. Once, when Convergence
RI’s Richard Asinof had neck surgery, he relied on his son, who lives in San Diego, to help him get the newsletter out. Steve Ahlquist — whose dogged efforts to cover social justice issues across the state got him dubbed a “superhero” by the Columbia Journalism Review — has no firm plans for a successor when he decides to retire. And Elizabeth McNamara told me that although she’s proud she can pay herself a $45,000 salary for running East Greenwich News, she knows that won’t be enough to find a suitably qualified and experienced replacement. 

“I really don’t pretend to have answers for how journalism should go forward,” she says. 

And although many of these outlets are committed to inclusivity in their coverage, the journalists themselves still look a lot like the rest of the state’s press corps: white. Moreover, McNamara acknowledges her husband’s income as a lawyer helps make her venture possible. “The dirty little secret, in a way, of some of these small websites is that they are in richer communities where people have spouses that can support them,” she says. 

Here, again, what’s happening locally reflects larger trends. Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy, co-author of the recent book, What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate, told me that affluent suburbs often find ways to take care of their own news needs, while “urban communities of color and rural areas are really struggling.”

And while this new array of options might be a feast for news junkies, it’s no match for the kind of market penetration that major outlets had in the days of yore. WPRI reporter Ted Nesi told me that, as a voracious consumer of news, he’s thrilled to have so many sources to follow. But he wonders if the average person who isn’t consuming “fire-hydrant levels” of news is as well-informed as a generation ago.

The old days were far from perfect, he says. But back then, if you bought a paper or watched a newscast, you learned a lot about local civic life in one sitting. Nowadays that experience is harder to replicate. 

At some point in this piece, journalistic ethics dictate that I note my ties to the folks I’m writing about. And because this is Rhode Island and I’ve been a freelance journalist for more than a decade, my disclosure statement is a bit long. This is a small state for everyone; when you’re a journalist, it’s even smaller.

I was the news editor and staff writer at The Providence Phoenix before the paper closed in 2014. I have been interviewed by Bill Bartholomew’s podcast, Ocean State Stories and What’s Up Newp. I have written for ecoRI News, the Rhode Island Current and Steve Ahlquist’s former site, UpriseRI. G. Wayne Miller, the director of Ocean State Stories, has visited one of the journalism classes I’ve taught, and I, in turn, have visited a class taught by Janine Weisman, the editor of the Rhode Island Current. ConvergenceRI founder Richard Asinof was — many years ago — my editor when I contributed to Jewish Rhode Island. And I am a longtime financial supporter of Steve Ahlquist’s work. 

And while I’m declaring things, I should note that I am unabashedly rooting for these indie online outlets to succeed. 

There are many reasons for this. 

Foremost is my belief that more reporters covering a community — a city, a state — is a good thing. A state so full of art, food, architecture and history deserves to have that culture seen and celebrated. And a state with a long history of corruption needs as many watchdogs as possible. 

A common theme I heard from the folks I interviewed for this piece — Steve Ahlquist, who has traversed the state to cover school board meetings about transgender-student policies, among other subjects; ecoRI News, which covers the Coastal Resources Management Council and other nitty-gritty details of the environmental beat; East Greenwich News, which keeps a close eye on local schools, politics and real estate — is that they’re often the only reporters at a particular meeting. One reporter is unquestionably better than none.

I also think local ownership of news outlets is a good thing. (In fact, this magazine, Rhode Island Monthly, is privately owned by publisher John Palumbo, a Rhode Island native.) This was once a given; if you go back far enough in time, all major news outlets in the state were locally owned. But those days are long gone. Gannett, the company that owns The Providence Journal, is based in New York City, where it oversees its ownership of hundreds of newspapers. (The company recently announced it would close the Journal’s Providence printing facility in March due to an “insurmountable supply chain issue,” taking with it more than 125 full- and part-time jobs.) 

All three major TV-news stations are owned by larger companies based elsewhere. (Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns WJAR, is based in Maryland. Nexstar Media Group, which owns WPRI, is in Texas. Standard Media Group, which owns ABC 6, is in Nashville.) Even The Boston Globe, which produces great work through its Rhode Island bureau, is owned by out-of-state billionaire John Henry.

When news organizations are owned by people who live in the places they cover, it shows in the work they produce. 

In 2020, during the early weeks of COVID, What’s Up Newp published a spreadsheet with names and digital payment info for local service-industry employees who were suddenly out of work due to lockdowns. “This is where you can consider sending a ‘tip’ to your favorite bartender, server, stylist, barber or other service worker,” read an accompanying article. Around the same time, the site launched an online concert series for local artists with the invitation, “If there are musicians, artists, authors, and/or anyone else in the creative community that is interested, our platform can be yours for an hour.”

Recently, ecoRI News embarked on a “mobile newsroom” initiative, holding public meetings in each of the state’s thirty-nine cities and towns to hear from folks about local issues. At the one I attended in the basement of the Newport Public Library, most of the outlet’s staff — reporters, the publisher, the development director, the head editor — were in attendance. 

I have no plans to cancel my subscriptions to the Journal and the Globe. But I must say that it feels better to support grassroots news organizations like these. It’s the journalistic equivalent of shopping at a farmers market and meeting the person who grew the vegetables.

Richard Asinof told me he views people’s stories as their most valuable possessions and he believes that, by sharing these stories, we become more human. “Creating a vehicle where you can share those stories creates a community and a neighborhood, whether or not you actually live right next to each other,” he says.

Elizabeth McNamara told me that an increased focus on hyperlocal issues may be a path out of our overheated and rancorous national debates. 

“In my really utopian vision,” she says, “if we could just focus on what’s in front of us — what’s happening at our schools and in our government, on our main street, and who our neighbors are … somehow that could bring us back.”

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series looking at Rhode Island’s shifting media landscape. 

 

NEW MEDIA TIMELINE

2009:EcoRI News is founded.

2012: What’s Up Newp launches after the rollout of similar sites in Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Stowe, Vermont. (The Newport site is the only one that remains active.) Current owner Ryan Belmore purchases the site in 2013.

2013: Journalism veteran Richard Asinof launches ConvergenceRI, a subscription-based online newsletter “offering news and analysis at the convergence of health, science, technology and innovation in Rhode Island.”

2014: East Greenwich News debuts as an LLC. It is later reincorporated as a nonprofit in 2017.

2018: Bill Bartholomew launches his podcast, Bartholomewtown. In an interview with The Newport Daily News, he explains, “I felt like as a songwriter and a storyteller, I was uniquely qualified to really push that angle of trying to get the human side of the stories.”

February 2023: Ocean State Stories launches. In a press release, Salve Regina’s Pell Center, where the outlet is based, writes, “[G. Wayne] Miller emphasized the project’s importance against the
national backdrop of increasingly endangered local reporting, a cornerstone of American democracy.”

March 2023: The Rhode Island Current launches, as the latest outpost of the policy-focused nonprofit, States Newsroom. Today, the organization employs “more than 220 full-time editors, reporters and support staff covering thirty-nine states” and partners with existing nonprofit newsrooms in eleven other states.

June 2023: Steve Ahlquist launches his Substack newsletter.

August 2023: The Providence Eye launches. In its debut post, the authors write, “Ironically, in this time of overflowing information about any subject in the world, it’s still hard to figure out why things are the way they are right in our own neighborhoods, right around the corner.”

March 2024: U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse invites ecoRI News co-founder Frank Carini as a guest for the State of the Union address. “Frank’s clear-eyed writing on the dangers climate change poses to the Ocean State should be essential reading,” he says. “He has fearlessly called out the fossil fuel industry’s attempts to mislead Rhode Islanders and, along with his wife, Joanna, created an outlet for exceptional investigative reporting on local environmental issues.”

September 2024: The New England Newspaper & Press Association names the Rhode Island Current as the region’s Online News Organization of the Year.

October 2024: The Providence Eye and ecoRI News are selected, along with more than 200 other local news orgs, for funding from the national nonprofit, Press Forward. In its announcement the organization said, “Collectively, [the recipients] are reporting and producing the original, locally based stories people need to be involved in their cities and make decisions about their daily lives.”

 

NEW MEDIA OUTLETS

Outlet: Ocean State Stories, oceanstatestories.org 

Leadership: Director G. Wayne Miller

Recommended Reading: Zane Wolfang, “Afghan Refugees Are Learning to Call Rhode Island Home,” from November 2023

 

Outlet: Steve Ahlquist’s Substack Newsletter, steveahlquist.substack.com  

Leadership: Founder, reporter and editor Steve Ahlquist

Recommended Reading: Steve Ahlquist, “A Ceremony to Honor the 54 People Who Died While Experiencing Homelessness in Rhode Island Last Year,” from October 2024

 

Outlet: ecoRI News, ecori.org 

Leadership: Publisher and co-founder Joanna Detz; editor Bonnie Philips

Recommended Reading: Colleen Cronin, “Dangerous Intersection: RIDOT Hides Crash Data from Public,” from September 2023

 

Outlet: The Providence Eye, pvdeye.org 

Leadership: Founder, publisher and managing editor, Deborah Schimberg

Recommended Reading: Taylor Polites, “Still Hoping for the Cranston Street Armory,” from November 2023

 

Outlet: What’s Up Newp, whatsupnewp.com

Leadership: Owner and publisher Ryan Belmore

Recommended Reading: Ruthie Wood, “Fungus Among Us: An Underground Rhode Island Society Unites the Mycologically Curious,” from September 2024

 

Outlet: East Greenwich News, eastgreenwichnews.com 

Leadership: Founder, editor and reporter Elizabeth McNamara

Recommended Reading: Elizabeth McNamara, “Glenwood Cemetery Goes to the Goats,” from July 2024

 

Outlet: ConvergenceRI, convergenceri.com

Leadership: Founder, editor and reporter Richard Asinof

Recommended Reading: Peter Simon (guest author), “What Does a Doctor Say to Parents of a Toddler who Has Been Found With Elevated Levels of Lead?,” from February 2013, republished in February 2023

 

Outlet: Bartholomewtown podcast, btown.buzzsprout.com

Leadership: Founder and host Bill Bartholomew

Recommended Listening: “Brown’s Solidarity Encampment Dismantled: Brown Daily Herald Editor-in-Chief Neil Mehta,” from May 2024