A media market splintered

Published May 5, 2010 at 9:52 p.m.
Online
The fragmentation of the local media market, long predicted, is finally a reality.

The fragmentation of the local media market, long predicted, is finally a reality.

The state’s political blogs break news on a regular basis. EcoRI, a non-profit media venture, is offering up a steady diet of environmental fare. Providence Daily Dose has been feeding the hipsters for almost three years. And Jim Hummel, a former investigative reporter at ABC6, has demonstrated — with a string of online videos targeting Central Falls corruption — that an independent, one-man shop can even drive the local news cycle.

But the latest entry, GoLocalProv.com, may be taking the most explicit aim to date at Rhode Island’s central media outlet: the Providence Journal.

On a recent Wednesday morning, golocal featured video from a gubernatorial debate, a piece on the best burgers in the state, and some musings on diversity at Providence College.

There are news, sports, politics, and lifestyle sections. The site offers up liberal and conservative columnists, rebranded as “Mindsetters.” And GoLocalProv, which does cross-promotion with talk-radio station WPRO, has some recognizable names attached to the project: longtime Rhody weatherman John Ghiorse, sports radio personality Scott Cordischi, and WPRO host John DePetro, among others.

Josh Fenton, a Providence public relations maven who founded the site with Paul Krasinski of Quincy, Massachusetts-based Ando Media, says the pair began working on the idea two years ago amid signs that the broadsheet may not be long for this world.

“Those under 40,” Fenton says, “functionally have no relationship with a newspaper.”

But it is not just the generational shift in media habits that provides GoLocal with an opening. A ProJo under financial pressure has lost significant talent of late — senior political reporters Scott MacKay and Mark Arsenault took buyouts a couple of years ago, ace Red Sox reporter Sean McAdam left for the Boston Herald and wound up at Comcast Sportsnet.

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