Me interviewing V.P candidate Sargent Shriver in Providence during my “Providence Journal” days.
Liam Mulligan, the protagonist of my Edgar Award-winning crime novels, is an investigative reporter for The Providence Dispatch, a once-great, now dying newspaper in Providence, R.I. Although The Dispatch is fictional, its decline does resemble what has been happening to the real-life Providence Journal, where I began my journalism career many years ago.
In the 1970s and ’80s, The Journal was a truly great newspaper–so great that if it existed today as it did then it would be one of the three best metros in the country. But decades of declining revenue, circulation, staff, and ambition have diminished it beyond recognition.
In the following article, Scott MacKay, a former Journal reporter who now works for Rhode Island’s NPR affiliate, tells the sad story.
Oh, and if you’re a mind to, you can order my Mulligan novels, including the latest, Providence Rag, here.
