Pols and blowhards beware: PolitiFact is coming

Published June 10, 2010 at 2:35 a.m.
As the ProJo turns
...The Providence Journal , facing the newspaper industry's twin demons of declining circulation and plummeting advertising revenue, is in an intense period of reinvention...

The Providence Journal, facing the newspaper industry's twin demons of declining circulation and plummeting advertising revenue, is in an intense period of reinvention.

Over the last couple of years, the paper has shut down its regional bureaus, ramped up its on-line operation, and redesigned the print version — putting all the local news in the A section and relegating most of the national and international news, available elsewhere anyhow, to the B section.

All that activity, it seems, has done little to fix the paper's long-term problems: circulation continues to drop, a smaller staff can only do so much. The ProJo — if still the major player in the local media market — does not have the journalistic heft of its glory years.

But the paper is hardly the only one struggling to find its footing in a difficult environment. Experimentation makes sense. And the ProJo's next major effort may be its most compelling to date.

Newsroom sources say the paper is gearing up to launch a Rhode Island version of PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning initiative that originated with the St. Petersburg Times in Florida in August 2007.

PolitiFact's reporters measure the veracity of statements made by politicians and pundits with a Truth-O-Meter that offers up six ratings: true, mostly true, half true, barely true, false, and — for real whoppers — pants on fire.

Staffers have also combed through candidate Barack Obama's speeches, position papers, and web site to cull over 500 campaign promises and are now measuring the president's progress on their Obameter.

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