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 mediaoutlet based at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center that is devoted toin-depth reporting on issues of importance to all of Rhode Island’s manycommunities. Our stories are told with data, expert input, and the personalexperiences of residents. We launched in February 2023.

 

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

We redesigned our website, making it more user-friendly andadding 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 thethird annual Anthem Awards competition in the “Diversity, Equity &Inclusion – Public Service” category.

We remained committed to furtheringthe objectives of the many professional organizations to which we belong: the Societyof Professional Journalists, the Online News Association, the New England FirstAmendment Coalition, the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets (ANNO), EducationWriters Association, and LION Publishers: Local, Independent, Online News.

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

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

Here’s to 2025, another great year ahead!