Type Private Founded 22 January 2007 | Industry Newspapers | |
Key people Melanie Radler, president
Roland McBride, vice president Products The Call and seven other newspapers in Rhode Island Headquarters Wilmington, Delaware, United States Parent organizations Glacier Media, Horizon Publications, Inc. | ||
RISN Operations Inc., also called Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers, is a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. The company was founded by Illinois-based newspaper executives in early 2007 to purchase the Rhode Island holdings of Journal Register Company, which it did for $8.3 million.
Contents
In 2013, RISN acquired the Yuma Sun and the Porterville Recorder from Freedom Communications.
Officers
The corporation's first two named officers, Melanie Radler (president) and Roland McBride (vice president and treasurer), were both Illinois residents connected with Conrad Black's former Hollinger International newspaper chain. Radler is the daughter of F. David Radler, a former Hollinger boss; McBride is chief financial officer of Horizon Publications Inc., the company Radler founded after he left Hollinger.
McBride also served as CFO of American Publishing Co., a former Hollinger subsidiary, and was said in an indictment to have aided Black's and the elder Radler's misappropriation of $5.5 million in connection with the sale of some newspaper properties from Hollinger to Horizon.
As of March 2007, the company had not yet announced a local headquarters. Its incorporation papers list a Delaware address.
Dailies
RISN operates five daily newspapers:
The company also briefly published the Warwick Daily Times, based in the West Warwick newsroom. The Warwick paper had been founded by JRC in 2006 but was folded by RISN in 2007.
Weeklies
RISN's five weekly newspapers, known collectively as Southern Rhode Island Newspapers, are based in the village of Wakefield, part of South Kingstown, Rhode Island. As Journal Register properties, the weeklies managed to avoid circulation slips as sharp as those that plagued the dailies in the early 2000s, but nevertheless have still cut back on staff members, consolidating positions that were once held by multiple people and forcing new responsibilities onto the employees that remain. In the past 16 months, the weekly chains have lost three full-time photographers, two full-time sportswriters and eight full-time reporters. A Providence Journal report said the group's combined weekly circulation of around 13,000 in 2007 was down from 16,140 in 2001.
Southern Rhode Island Newspapers' offices are at 187 Main Street, Wakefield, Rhode Island 02879. The chain is infamous for its poor writing, reporting, design, and several plagiarism cases.
Plagiarism controversies
In April 2013, an assistant editor at The Narragansett Times plagiarized the lede (the first paragraph of a news story) from an article in a competitor newspaper, the South County Independent. The South County Independent asked for a front-page apology, and The Narragansett Times subsequently printed a clarification stating the words were "inadvertently transcribed" and "apologize[d] for any confusion this may have caused our readers." The Times editor who plagiarized the content was not fired; in fact, the employee was later promoted.
In March 2015, a reporter at The East Greenwich Pendulum plagiarized breaking news content from the North East Independent's Facebook page and the East Greenwich News blog in reporting the verdict in a local court trial. The Pendulum subsequently published a correction stating its page-one story used "reporting from the East Greenwich News website and the Independent Newspapers Facebook page that was not credited. The Pendulum regrets the oversight and apologizes to both news organizations." The reporter who plagiarized the content was not fired.