All Authors >

DAVID SCHARFENBERG

Latest Articles

The uncertain future of Rhode Island media

Breaking news or broken news?
The endless, anguished debate over how to deliver local news in the Age of the Internet has not reached anything like a satisfying conclusion.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 06, 2011

In an iPod world, Broadway goes vinyl

Records Department
Dave Lifrieri, owner of Analog Underground on Broadway, was in the eighth grade listening to Beatles and Led Zeppelin on vinyl when the CD player — and the inevitable avalanche of remasters — made their full arrival.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 30, 2011

Etips and the history of Rhode Island graffiti

Back to the tunnel
I meet Etips — at 30, an elder statesman in Rhode Island's graffiti scene — in front of Mill's Tavern on North Main Street in Providence.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 31, 2011

Rhode Island's ticking time bomb

A fun, easy-to-understand guide to the pension crisis that could destroy everything you care about (or not)
This is a story about the pension crisis that's tearing apart Providence and Central Falls and just might lay waste to the whole goddamn state.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 23, 2011

Tiny Showcase grapples with a market gone big

Print It
Jon Buonaccorsi stands alongside a large, rectangular table and plays with a series of flat, wooden pieces that, when assembled, make for an arty little pizza shop that might look sharp on your mantle.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 23, 2011

The ''Weak Evidence Effect''

That's It?
About one month before the mid-term elections last fall, 98 people from around the country — Democrats, Republicans, and independents — sat down at their computers to participate in a psychological experiment put together by three Brown University researchers.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 16, 2011

The Roots Café takes hold

Downtown
It's a Thursday afternoon, a week-and-a-half before the Roots Café is set to open its doors on Westminster Street in downtown Providence, and the place is starting to come together.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 02, 2011

Will the Catholic Church kill gay marriage?

Inside the high-stakes battle over same-sex nuptials in Rhode Island
Rhode Island’s gay marriage moment has finally arrived. And the Catholic Church just might kill it.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 23, 2011

Reefer medness

For five years, Rhode Island's medical marijuana movement has been a grassroots affair. For better or worse, it's about to go mainstream
In the five years since the General Assembly approved Rhode Island's medical marijuana law, licensed smokers have operated in a sort of smoke-filled netherworld.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 10, 2011

Chafee makes his mark on education reform

Boardrooms
The State House was mostly empty Tuesday afternoon, as the snow dropped cold and wet outside. So the crowd was rather modest as Governor Lincoln Chafee walked into the ornate State Room, just outside his office, to announce four new picks for the nine-member Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 02, 2011

Agents of change

City Year Rhode Island is engaged in an ambitious assault on the urban education crisis. But the push has required the group to engage in a transformation that raises unsettling questions about diversity and public service
The highly publicized turmoil at Central Falls High School is but the leading edge of a major crisis in urban education in this state.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 03, 2011

Brown's Mark Blyth on austerity, virtue, and why the Democrats are like your mom

Cutting back
On the heels of this fall's Tea Party tempest, austerity is all the rage in Washington. Witness President Obama's call for a five-year freeze in domestic spending in his the State of the Union speech this week and the GOP's push, in response, for a far fuller gutting of the federal government.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 26, 2011

artist: Tricia Rose, Brown University’s hip-hop scholar, discusses rap’s creative crisis

Keeping it unreal
Some 40 years in, rap is nothing less than a cultural juggernaut. But it has not lost its power to provoke.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 19, 2011

At RISD: Art, science, and what's wrong with ATMs

Confabs
Among the most prominent solutions offered up for our present economic malaise and the broader decline of the republic: a robust investment in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 19, 2011

On doctors, psychologists, and torture

Q+A
Last year, Physicians for Human Rights used government papers to document that CIA doctors and psychologists participated in the conception and monitoring of the agency's infamous torture regime at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and other detention centers.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 19, 2011

Chafee’s talk radio ban

On the Air
Governor Lincoln Chafee's announcement this week that his administration would forsake talk radio sparked all manner of outrage.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 12, 2011

Reed on the Arizona shootings, the Tea Party, and why Bob Gates might stick around

Ask the Senator
Just days after the Arizona tragedy, the Phoenix sat down with Senator Jack Reed for a Q+A about the shooting, the Tea Party, and some troubling news out of Pakistan.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 12, 2011

The Kennedys will rise again!

Dynasties
As you've probably heard a couple thousand times by now, Rhode Island Representative Patrick J. Kennedy's retirement means Washington is without a member of Team Camelot for the first time in 64 years.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 12, 2011

Rabble-rousers, re-enactors, and the New World Order

The Inauguration
Charles Picerno, a disheveled rabble-rouser, stands at the back of the crowd while Lincoln Chafee is inaugurated as the state's 58th governor.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 05, 2011

Who wins? Who loses?

What special interests will be served -- or ignored -- under the new regime?
Quick question: who won the Rhode Island elections in November?

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 29, 2010

The political story everyone missed

John Robitaille almost beat Lincoln Chafee in the race for the corner office. How did he come so close -- and why did the local media leave him almost wholly unvetted?
The headlines from this year's gubernatorial race were Democrat Frank Caprio's indelicate suggestion that the leader of the free world "shove it" and Lincoln Chafee's historic victory as Rhode Island's first independent governor.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 22, 2010

<< first ...< prev 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | next >... last >>

9 of 16 (results 308)