12.19.99

This is the final installment of the Rhode Island Century, a year-long look at the history of the state between 1900 and 2000. Once a month the newspaper focused on a single decade, publishing four pages of stories and pictures in the Sunday Journal, and regional stories in the seven local editions the following Monday. The complete project may be read on-line at http://projo.com/century/

Since coming to the Providence Journal in 1985, Jody McPhillips worked in the Newport, East Bay, and Washington bureaus before becoming a general assignment reporter on the city staff. Previously, she was a medical writer and regional and city editor at Gannett newspapers in Elmira and Rochester, N.Y. McPhillips graduated from Smith College, where she studied English literature and biology. She lives in Providence.

Scott MacKay has been a Providence Journal reporter since 1984. Educated at the University of Vermont, where he studied history and political science, he has covered suburban, Providence City Hall and State House beats since coming to the paper. He was manager of the Journal's East Bay news bureau in 1985. MacKay is a regular panelist on the Channel 12 Newsmakers program hosted by Jack White. He started his career at the Burlington (VT.) Free Press where he covered politics. He lives in Providence.

Jean Plunkett, an assistant city editor, joined the staff of The Providence Journal in 1986. Before coming to the newspaper, she was a librarian, a social worker, and a book editor. In 1997 she shared the Michael P. Metcalf Media Award for the series Making History/Hacienda Historia ; she edited one of the paper's first serializations, Willie's Nightmare ; and in 1998, was an editor on Teaching Matters . She is a graduate of Duquesne University.

Lynn Rognsvoog is a picture editor and page designer at The Providence Journal, where she works primarily on features pages, special projects, and redesigns. Her work has won numerous design and editing awards. She was selected as one of three Outstanding Journalists in the Journal's newsroom in 1998. Previously, she was art director at the TAB newspapers in metro Boston, and before that held art or editorial positions at a number of magazines in New England. She has a B.A. from Wells College, in Aurora, N.Y., where she graduated summa cum laude.

For projo.com, several staff members have contributed to the effort of archiving the series online over the past year. Among them are: chief designer Mike Foran and designer Beth Heaney, and production staffers Chris Gonsalves, Sheila Lennon, Sean Polay and Shawnita Lambert.