Mainstream Media

Raising Concerns

By Justin Katz | May 5, 2008 |

Methinks there’s a missing “my” in Karen Lee Ziner’s “Remarks raise concern” piece on the front page of yesterday’s Local News section: A nonprofit group whose board members include First Lady Sue Carcieri asserts that nearly 45 percent of all immigrants in Rhode Island — legal and illegal — lack high school diplomas and “this…

The Front-Page Fifteen Minutes

By Justin Katz | May 4, 2008 |

I’m not in the least disputing the Martins’ relevancy as a representative human interest topic (and my family would certainly not be so comfortable broadcasting personal financial information). Still, the Providence Journal’s front-page profile of the family makes me curious about the genesis of the report. Did Journal Staff Writer Lynn Arditi advertise online for…

WelcomeToAllPawtucketAllTheTime,InPawtucketTimesStyle

By Carroll Andrew Morse | May 2, 2008 |

No one can be sure if Pawtucket’s new weekly newspaper, All Pawtucket All The Time, will make it (h/t Phillipe and Jorge), but APATT will be starting out with one advantage that its daily competitor, the Pawtucket Times has never been able to achieve — they’ve figured out how to insert space between paragraphs in…

NY Times Digs and Finds a Hole

By Marc Comtois | April 21, 2008 |

Over the weekend, the ProJo ran a NY Times piece that divulged that (gasp) the Pentagon squired around ex-military types–some even with ties to military contractors–in an attempt to get favorable press about the Iraq War. Stunning, no? Both Max Boot and John Podhoretz have a say, with Podhoretz offering up an inside-baseball reason as…

An Absence of Story

By Justin Katz | April 9, 2008 |

This is odd. My morning blogging session was disrupted by the discovery that the story at the very top of the Providence Journal’s front page, today, “Study finds gaps growing in R.I. between haves and have-nots,” doesn’t appear to be available online. Well, I’ve got to go to work, but if experience is any guide,…

Once Again Offering AR’s Services to Steve Peoples

By Justin Katz | March 19, 2008 |

The Providence Journal’s Steve Peoples provides another scrapbook entry for the file illustrating how average folk around her develop such a skewed understanding of the state’s operation: Governor Carcieri has asked the state’s highest court to strike down a law passed last year that he says threatens to paralyze Rhode Island government by blocking his…

Comparative Welfare

By Justin Katz | March 11, 2008 |

The Providence Journal, as represented by Steve Peoples, still isn’t giving the whole story when it comes to Rhode Island’s Family Independence Program: Lawmakers spent yesterday afternoon poring through Governor Carcieri’s 101-page plan that would dramatically cut benefits to the poor, while encouraging a “work-first” model and promoting “healthy marriages.” The governor’s sweeping proposal, if…

The Activist’s Scientific Assertion

By Justin Katz | March 10, 2008 |

Following the titular formula typically used in articles about scientific (or at least quasi-scientific) studies, the Providence Journal gave this story the headline “Views may spur hate crimes”: Anti-immigrant sentiment is fueling nationwide increases in the number of hate groups and the number of hate crimes targeting Latinos, a watchdog group said Monday. The Southern…

WPRO AM gets FM Signal

By Marc Comtois | March 10, 2008 |

Attention fellow members of the VRWC: set decoder rings to “Q2340442LLM” The Score is no more and WPRO 630 AM has acquired the 99.7 FM slot to better promulgate VRWC talking points. That is all.

Media Event or Partisan Rally?

By Justin Katz | March 5, 2008 |

Has anybody else picked up on something curious in coverage of the Providence Newspaper Guild Follies? Chelsea Clinton, in town to campaign for her mother, was squired around by US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. And US Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic nominee in 2004, turned up as a surprise guest about a third…