Jim Gillis, Former Newport Daily News Reporter and Member of RI Journalism Hall of Fame, Dies at 64

Jim Gillis, Former Newport Daily News Reporter and Member of RI Journalism Hall of Fame, Dies at 64

Rhode Island journalist Jim Gillis has died at the age of 64. 

An accomplished reporter for the Newport Daily News for more than three decades, Gillis had publicly shared his battle of being on dialysis waiting for a kidney transplant, which he received in 2020. 

“On this date three years ago, Dr. Paul Morrissey and other members of the Rhode Island Hospital transplant team placed a donated kidney inside me,” Gillis posted to Facebook on March 9, 2023. “Looking forward to posting a similar message next year. Please consider becoming an organ donor.”

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Gillis, who wrote the column “Spare Change,” was inducted into the Rhode Island Journalism Hall of Fame in 2021.

A Pawtucket native, Gillis graduated from Tolman High School and the University of Rhode Island. 

Gillis was married to Julie Bisbano, an English teacher at Portsmouth High School.

When Gillis was inducted into the Hall of Fame, the University of Rhode Island's student newspaper -- The Good 5 Cent Cigar, wrote a feature on Gillis.

In part, the paper wrote about its former editor:

From enthralling interviews with the likes of Mickey Rooney and Elvis fanatics, to the memorialization of soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice, longtime Newport Daily News reporter Jim Gillis, ‘81, has had the freedom to cover all corners of life as a steward of local news. 

“You talk to so many people, and what I like doing is I like talking to people from all walks,” Gillis said.

This year Gillis will be inducted into the Rhode Island Journalism Hall of Fame, following a two-year induction delay due to the pandemic. 

“It shows that at least somebody thinks highly of some of the stuff you’ve done,” he said. “I mean, Rhode Island is a small pool but it’s also, you know, it’s just nice to be thought of and know that the work you’ve put in is valued.”

A close friend of Gillis, University of Rhode Island External Relations and Communications Assistant Director Dave Lavallee, spoke highly of his reporting abilities. 

“I continue to be really proud of folks who come from URI journalism and The Good Five Cent Cigar and I don’t know if anyone represents old-time, solid, fair, great reporting [more] than Jim Gillis,” Lavallee said. 

After spending 33 years at the Newport Daily News and understanding what it means to report on Rhode Island communities, Gillis said local news outlets provide information that people rely on that they would not be able to find anywhere else. However, he said that it has been a struggle to convince people to spend money on their local newspapers.

“You know, people think Facebook is news, and it’s not,” he said. 

Story tips can be found on Facebook though, which Gillis said he takes into account when writing his column Spare Change for the outlet. Gillis began writing the column in 1986 and continues to do so presently. It started as a one-off column, according to him, and features stories about topics ranging from favorite films filmed in Newport to the local impact of hurricanes.

Having the freedom to cover different topics as a local news reporter is an advantage of the career path, according to Gillis, as opposed to covering national news in a specific area such as political or scientific reporting.

However, some drawbacks to being a local reporter Gillis said include people knowing who you are. Years ago, Gillis said he received numerous borderline-racist letters from a person who signed them as “Mencken” after early 20th-century journalist H.L. Mencken, who was a controversial columnist at the time. He also received a dead squid in the mail around that same time with no attached note. 

One day, Gillis ran into a man who started ranting at him in a 7-Eleven and in a separate neighborhood on the same day. The man said a phrase during his ranting and raving which Gillis recalled from a letter that “Mencken” had used before and called him out on it. He never received a letter from him again. 

“The drawback also is that you’re in a small area so people have an idea of who you are and if they want to send you a piece of dead squid in the mail they can, I guess,” Gillis said.

Gillis was not the only one of his parents’ children to enter the field of journalism, as his sister Cindy Gillis, ‘83, would go on to work in medical publications, including International Meetings & Science. 

 As children, Gillis and his sister were raised around newspapers and broadcast news in their home. He even said that their landlord would throw papers from the first floor up to their third-floor apartment for the family to read once she had finished. 

“We had newspapers everywhere; we always watched the news,” Gillis said. “I was kind of just hooked from there.”

After his father, a World War II veteran, died when Gillis was in seventh grade, he lost interest in school and his grades dropped. High school is where Gillis said he began to “rebound” when his junior-year English teacher encouraged him to pursue journalism and recommended URI’s journalism program.

“I had my heart set on this so, you know, it’s a good thing I had some skill for it because it would’ve been heartbreaking if I wasn’t any good at it,” he said.