What a year has brought: From Projo to Pell
One year ago today, I left The Providence Journal, where Ihad been a staff writer since 1981. I soon transitioned into the director ofOceanStateStories.org, a new non-profit media outlet based at Salve ReginaUniversity’s Pell Center, where I had been a visiting fellow for several years.

After weeks of planning with Ocean State Stories co-founderJim Ludes, Pell Center executive director, and a great staff at Pell, we launchedOcean 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 thiswriting.

We have formed partnerships with print newspapers – notably JohnHowell’s Warwick Beacon, Cranston Herald and Johnston SunRise – and partnershipswith other online media outlets including ecoRI News, RINewsToday and EastGreenwich News. We offer all of our content for free to our partners, and theyin turn offer theirs for free to us.
We publish every story and Q&A in both English andSpanish. I write many of our stories, with the rest provided by a growing corpsof freelance writers – some well-established and others still journalismstudents 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 ofProfessional Journalists, the Online News Association, the New England FirstAmendment Coalition, the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets (ANNO), and LIONPublishers (Local, Independent, Online News).
All of this is possible thanks to the support of generousindividuals and organizations who see our model – one similar to many othersacross the U.S. – as a big part of the future of news in an era when many legacynewspapers have disappeared and others, barely staffed, have become ghostpapers. Our gratitude to all of our supporters today and in the future.
Our plan for Year Two is to grow – stay tuned for details ofthat!
I also must mention another initiative based at the PellCenter: Story in the Public Square, the multiple Telly-winning national PBS TV andSiriusXM show that has just been renewed for a 12th season. It starts inJanuary. Since beginning weekly production in January 2017 as a show seen only regionallyon our flagship station, Rhode Island PBS, we now are in more than 86% of thenation’s television markets with nearly 500 weekly broadcasts nationally – and wehave taped more than 300 guests, including journalists, filmmakers, editorialcartoonists, scientists, musicians, advocates, bestselling fiction andnon-fiction authors, poets, academics, still photographers, physicians, publichealth experts, actors, and Pulitzer-Prize winners.

A shout-out to our great team at Rhode Island PBS, led byChief Content Officer Jan Boyd and Production Manager Cherie O’Rourke!
In closing, let me express my hope that in all the work thatflows from the Pell Center, we have helped advance the public good. That wasthe aim of the late Senator Claiborne Pell, for whom the center is named, andit’s ours, too.