Barbarisi to cover Sox, Peoples possibly on the move

UPDATE: There's now some uncertainty about whether Steve Peoples will be leaving the State House to take up the City Hall beat. Word of the new assignment met with some internal pushback at the ProJo, and it remains to be seen how it all winds up. 

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The changes continue to come fast and furious at the Providence Journal, where City Hall reporter Dan Barbarisi is being reassigned to cover the Red Sox, and where State House reporter Steve Peoples is being detailed to the City Hall beat.

The moves, confirmed by ProJo sources, come as the statewide daily reportedly plans to scrap most of its locally zoned news editions. Barbarisi and Peoples did not return telephone messages left for them earlier today.

The locally unorthodox maneuver of realigning a news reporter to sports, set in motion when Sean McAdam left for the Boston Herald, shows the extent to which the Journal is banking its future on sports coverage. The continued micro-emphasis on scholastic sports, though, might be a bit misplaced considering how Rhode Islanders focus on pro games, such as the topic covered with this piece yesterday by the NYT's William Rhoden, in the ProJo's backyard.

Barbarisi, reputedly a Yankees' fan without professional sportswriting experience, is nonetheless a self-starter with a knack for finding good stories. He can be expected to do well while being paired with Joe McDonald in covering the Sox.

A 2001 graduate of Tufts University, Barbarisi joined the Journal that year, starting by working in the paper's Massachusetts' bureau.

Providence City Hall also offers a rich vein of stories -- although ProJo reporters moved in the past from City Hall to the State House, rather than the other way around. Yet with the elimination of most locally zoned editions, Providence stories can also be expected to get broader and more consistent play in the Journal.

Initially hired as a two-year reporter-intern, Peoples joined the Journal's permanent staff in 2005.

The reassignment of Peoples will leave the Journal's State House bureau, temporarily at least, with two reporters -- down from three and a significant reduction from the long-gone level of four-to-five during the legislative season. Peoples is another of the Journal's talented young scribes, and he, too, should find of plenty of journalistic grist on his new beat.