Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

Journal expands local news coverage

On June 5, 1995, after the sun had set on The Evening Bulletin, it rose again on a redesigned Providence Journal-Bulletin, featuring a renewed commitment to local news.

A new Rhode Island section debuted, presenting the most important stories from around the state. The top story in the first Rhode Island section detailed how the proposed Providence Place mall would rearrange traffic patterns in downtown Providence.

The second page of the Rhode Island section was the City & Town report, which carried a nugget of news from each of the 46 municipalities in The Journal's coverage area. (The City & Town report would change format on Jan. 15, 1996, when the nuggets from each community were replaced with summaries of the top stories from each of the seven regions The Journal serves.)

Starting June 5, each of The Journal's regional editions included a section of local news, with a "centerpiece" story accompanied by color photographs on the cover.

To produce the expanded local sections, The Journal added 20 reporters to the local news staff, most of them "post-graduate interns," a newly created position at the paper. The interns signed on for two-year stints working in Journal news bureaus covering local communities.