PROJO - All the Right Moves in RI Lead Paint Saga

The cover story for the current issue of THE ECONOMIST is: Who Killed the Newspaper?  The influential THE ECONOMIST opines that while a few newspapers in the "rich countries" have made strides to get with a digital age, "most are still too timid, defensive or high-minded."  Among those not too timid, defensive or high-minded is THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, known as PROJO.

Since last October I've been posting on this blog about the infamous Rhode Island (RI) lead paint saga.  A key resource, in addition to the contacts I myself have developed over the past 11 months, has been THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL.

You bet, RI lead paint II was tedious or, as one observer in the peanut gallery commented, "brutal" to sit through.  But every day, PROJO had someone there.

In the beginning of RI lead paint II, it was PROJO intern Brandie Jeffers.  When she went on to a full-time paid gig at Boston's AP bureau, Peter Lord returned.  Lord, an environmental expert, has been on this story before there was even RI lead paint I.  He could have been out there chasing other stories.  But PROJO had him in Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein's Court Room 11.  In that way, PROJO signaled to local readers and global watchers of the RI lead paint saga that this issue was important.

Throw in too the investigative reporting skills of Mike Stanton. Stanton, as many know, researched and published "Prince of Providence."  Recently Stanton has been parachuted in when the RI lead paint saga spilled over into the coming election for the office of RI Attorney General. W/o what Stanton has been turning up, I doubt if THE WALL STREET JOURNAL would have run a recent editorial about what explaining RI AG Patrick Lynch has to do.  As a media bigfoot THE WALL STREET JOURNAL captured global attention for the complex legal and business issues embedded in the lead paint follies.

And, this week at the RI Ethics Commission hearing, PROJO provided reporter Bruce Landis to cover the whole enchilada.  Landis' background knowledge of how RI works and where to retrieve documents has been a gold mine for us trying to drill down to what's really happening during this messy campaign.

Next week at the August 30th hearing in Court Room 11, you can bet a PROJO representative will be there.

Oh, I have had to deal with some tough questions from PROJO's front lines about my little-understood role as a blogger.  Did those questions annoy/threaten me?  No, they made me think about, yeah, what that role is and what it could be.  But amidst all the ambiguity and confusion surrounding the intersection of mainstream media (MSM) like PROJO and the blogosphere, one thing is clear:  The two types of media are symbiotic, at least to my way to thinking.  I could not have done justice to the RI lead paint saga w/o PROJO.  And, I would like to assume that my blog posts have been equally useful to Lord, Stanton and Landis.  But, sure, I could be grandiose about the possible spillover effects of the blogoshpere on MSM. 

There's one more thing I do know for sure:  No, I don't want to do hard news, ever.  As a result of my coverage of the noir drama of RI lead paint, there have been offers to me to approach journalism the way Lord, Stanton and Landis do.  Thank you, but no thank you, I reply.  Hard news is too hard for me to do.