Is the Projo the Whitest Metro Newspaper in America?
GoLocal News Team
Is the Projo the Whitest Metro Newspaper in America?
In 2015, the Providence Journal wrote a multi-piece series titled "Race in Rhode Island," but now less than two years later, the last minority reporter, Alisha Pina, has resigned and taken a job in public relations for the State of Rhode Island.
“I was saddened to see Alisha Pina move on. While our communities have become more diverse in cultures, races and languages spoken, the newsrooms made up of people of color have reduced drastically,” said Ann Clanton of the National Association of Black Journalists, New England Chapter.
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The percentage of minorities working as reporters in newsrooms across the county is flat or slightly increased, according to recent studies.
“The annual survey also found that 28 percent of the news organizations reported having at least one minority journalist among their top three editors and 77 percent reported having at least one woman in a top-three position,” reported ASNE - the survey is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Minority journalists comprised 17 percent of the workforce in newsrooms that responded to this year's ASNE Diversity Survey.
"There’s no [minorities] that I know of (at the Providence Journal),” said Jim Vincent, President of the NAACP Providence Branch. "I would think it’s something on their radar screen, and they’re actively recruiting people of color at all levels — I’m trusting that they’re actively engaged."
The Providence Journal recently offered a buyout package to its newsroom. On Thursday, John Hill, head of the Providence Newspaper Guild told GoLocal that Deputy Executive Editor Peter Phipps, reporter Karen Lee Ziner, and one unidentified reporter had accepted the buyout package. It is expected that Providence Journal will have additional layoffs.
“With the exit of our friend Pina from the Providence Journal, I am concerned about the media-wide apathy, lack of resources - hiring of people of color. I urge the managing editors, newsrooms to reach out to the Journalism Departments and schools at our Historical Black Colleges and Universities and the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists,” said Clanton.
Where the Former Projo Stars Are Today
AP
Scott Mayerowitz
Airlines Reporter for Associated Press
Formerly ABC News correspondent - he is often the expert being quoted around airline strikes to plance crashes.
Photo: News Media Guild
NY Times
Dan Barry
New York Times
Barry was part of the young gun investigative group at the Journal in the early 1990s that won a Pulitzer for the investigation into Chief Justice Thomas Fay, and also investigated Cianci’s Nick Ricamo and others.
He was a Pulitzer Feature Writing finalist at the NY Times for his portfolio of "closely observed pieces that movingly capture how the great recession is changing lives and relationships in America.”
Boston Globe
Christopher Rowland
Washington Bureau Chief at the Boston Globe
He also has served as Metro political editor and as a healthcare reporter on the Business Desk.
Rowland covered Providence City Hall (among a number of assignments) during his Projo years.
LA Times (formerly)
Dean Starkman
Teaching in Hungry
Starkman previously was an editor at Columbia Journalism Review, Wall Street Journal and GoLocal. Starkman was part of the investigative team in 1994 at the Projo that won a Pulitzer.
An award-winning journalist and media critic, he is the author of 2014's “The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism.” Before leaving for Europe he was the Wall Street reporter for the LA Times.
USA Today (formerly
Tom Frank
CNN Now
Since leaving the Providence Journal, he has had stints at Long Island's Newsday and The Denver Post.
At USA Today, Frank was a 2012 Pulitzer finalist "for his sharply focused exploration of inflated pensions for state and local employees, enhancing stories with graphic material to show how state legislators pump up retirement benefits in creative but unconscionable ways."
The Weekly Standard
Philip Terzian
The Weekly Standard
Terzian is literary editor of The Weekly Standard. In the 1990's he served as the editorial page writer for the Providence Journal. In his career, he has been a writer and editor at Reuters, newspapers in Alabama and Kentucky, the New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times.
Wall Street Journal
Jennifer Levitz
Wall Street Journal
She was a pitbull State House reporter at the Providence Journal and has made a mark at the New England office of the Wall Street Journal.
She was part of the reporting team that was a Pulitzer Finalist in 2014 for a series called "Deadly Medicine," a stellar reporting project that documented the significant cancer risk to women of a common surgery and prompted a change in the prescribed medical treatment.
Washington Post
Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post
Once the State House reporter at the Providence Journal, today at the Post, Kevin is a longtime foreign correspondent who has been based in Tokyo, Mexico City and London, and also served as the Post’s Sunday and Features Editor.
He won a Pulitzer for international reporting with the Post in 2003, along with Mary Jordan, for their "exposure of horrific conditions in Mexico's criminal justice system and how they affect the daily lives of people."
NY Times
C.J. Chivers
New York Times
Pulitzer Prize winner in 2017.
Chivers is a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, where he "contributes to the Foreign and Investigative desks of The Times on conflict, politics, crime and human rights from Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, Georgia, Chechnya and elsewhere on a wide range of assignments."
His assignments are far from his political coverage in Providence City Hall and the State House.
Boston Globe
Cynthia Needham
Boston Globe
Today she serves as the political editor at the Globe and oversees coverage of the State House, City Hall, and Massachusetts politics. She was a political and State House reporter at the Providence Journal.
AP
Steve Peoples
Associated Press
Peoples has become a top political reporter and the lead on Presidential coverage at the Associated Press. In 2012, he covered the Mitt Romney campaign. After he left the Providence Journal he covered politics for Roll Call and contributed to GoLocal.
Computer World
Ken Mingis
Executive Editor, News and Strategy at Computer World
Mingis has risen through the ranks at the high tech pub and has served as the Apple expert and the online editor for Computer World, which is a different world from being the lead city reporter cover Buddy Cianci in the 1990s. He was the reporter who broke the infamous DiPrete Cranston Land Deal.
