False rumor about the Call and the Times knocked down

A false rumor -- that the Call of Woonsocket and the Times of Pawtucket were going to cut back to a merged twice-weekly publication schedule -- got some real traction in the state's journalistic community over the last week.

Barry M. Mechanic, publisher of the two papers, considered the situation serious enough that he appeared on radio station WNRI on Monday to rebut the rumor. As it stands, the Call will continue to be published seven days a week, and the Times six days a week. Going with a merged twice-weekly newspaper "is not anything that I'm planning to do," Mechanic tells N4N.

Tom Ward, publisher of the rival weekly Valley Breeze & Observer, says the rumor spread after someone in his newsroom picked it up from a person in Woonsocket. Ward says he determined the source was not credible, and he then told his staff not to discuss the rumor any more. "We don't know what's going on here," Ward says of the matter, so the message he conveyed was, "Don't talk about it."

Mechanic and Ward discussed the matter last week, and Mechanic says he takes Ward at his word in his description of how the rumor took off. The talk of the Call and the Times abandoning daily publication got so far that a journalism professor at URI -- who heard the rumor from an employee affiliated with a different newspaper -- thought it was legitimate.

Meanwhile, with the ProJo continuing to back away from its commitment to local coverage, local dailies and weeklies might be able to pick up some of the slack.

The journalistic resources of the Call and the Times were considerably downsized when the papers were owned by Journal Register, and the cutting has continued, although the excellent Jim Baron remains on the political beat. Mechanic, part of the management team at Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers, which bought the properties in 2007, nonetheless says he hopes to make circulation gains with a distinctly local emphasis. "That's what distinguishes me at this point," he says.

Still, whether Rhode Island's smaller papers will seriously beef up their reporting staffs seems doubtful.

As Ward notes, the ProJo's unfortunate retreat offers a potential opening. "That said, at the end of the day, someone's got to pay the bill," he adds.