It was in her fifth grade elementary-school class that Joy Fox decided she wanted to be a reporter. After graduating high school she worked as an intern for the Cranston Herald. By the time she was in college she was working as a copy editor. Now, at the age of 24, Fox is the editor of the Cranston Herald.
"A lot of people think this job is easy and glamorous," she said. "They think every day is a Watergate, but that doesn’t happen every day."
Reflecting upon her earliest experiences as a reporter, Fox recalled creating a small newspaper for her elementary school, St. Paul’s of Cranston. The school offered a journalism class as an extension of its fifth grade English curriculum.
"It was far from the New York Times," she said. She compared it to a column the Cranston Herald runs weekly on School Happenings.
Years later, while enrolled at Rhode Island College as a history major, Fox worked as a copy editor for the school’s student newspaper, The Anchor. She said at the time it was a big deal and unexpected to receive a stipend for schoolwork.
"I’m a dork," the petite brunette said laughing.
While in college, Fox took a semester off to study in Ireland. After graduating in 1999, she returned to Ireland for six months in search of freelance work.
"It broadened my experience, in general, more than little Rhode Island," she said.
Returning home, Fox took a job with American Power Conversion in West Kingston. She worked in product promotion for 10 months but found the turnaround rate for her work wasn’t quick enough. She was discouraged by the amount of time a press release had to be analyzed before it was sent out. "Because it was a publicly-traded company they wanted to make sure we weren’t making any huge predictions," she said. "Every word gets analyzed."
Reporting, however, was just the pace Fox was looking for.
In January 2001 Fox called an old friend, John Howell, publisher of the Cranston Herald and the Warwick Beacon. He had mentored Fox years before when she worked for him as an intern. She called looking for advice on how to get back into reporting.
Timing was everything for Fox. The Cranston Herald had been operating without an editor for almost a year. Howell had just the answer when he offered her the job.
The weekly newspaper is perfect for Fox. She said it was great to start writing again and she is challenged by the constant deadlines.
The Cranston Herald is almost a one-person operation. Because of staffing problems, Fox fills the paper herself. She occasionally gets the help of Joe Kernan, who assists with the police beat, and a separate staff compiles the lifestyle section. Week after week, readers are not surprised to pick up a copy of the two-section newspaper and find that every front page article was written by Fox. When all of her copy quotas are filled, she sometimes re-writes her articles for the Warwick Beacon.
Fox said she faces two obstacles as a reporter: Her age and her gender. While she likes to think neither is present, she said she is sure they affect her.
She said that as a woman, she finds it much easier to navigate the city’s school department than its city hall. She said this is predominately because education is perceived as a "female’s profession." In addition, the city’s superintendent is a woman. She said that while at City Hall, however, 99 percent of the time she is the only female in the room.
Fox noted that in the past few months the city has hired a new economics director who is a woman. After meeting with her, Fox asked her what it was like being the only woman in a top-ranking job at city hall. "She said it didn’t bother her anymore. She was used to it from her prior job," Fox said.
Because she is in her early 20s, Fox said, she often faces age discrimination from sources. "They know that it’s probably your first job and they know you are only from a community newspaper," she said.
To combat both gender and age discrimination, Fox said she uses her demeanor. "I don’t roll over and die," she said. "I use humor and sarcasm to give an element of fear."
Fox also said she finds a lot of sources are not comfortable with the female touch. She will often ask sources how they are and they will rant about how horrible things are for the city or the school department or some other organization. What she really asked was how they were, not how their jobs were. She has a genuine interest in her sources and sincerely wants to know how they are. She said this is very different from how a male journalist would approach it.
In an ideal world, Fox would be able to hire a second editor so the School Committee and the City Council beats could be divided.
While she enjoys the political areas the School Committee and the City Council offer, she believes there are not enough "happy stories" in newspapers. "There are good things going on in the world, too," she said.
Every day is unpredictable for Fox. "You get to do cool things," she said. In the 11 months she has worked for the Cranston Herald, Fox has ended up everywhere from single-engine planes flying over South County to boarding boats to get a story.
A small building on Warwick Avenue houses the Cranston Herald and the Warwick Beacon. Employment however, does not mean this is where Fox works. The day begins and ends in the office but there’s no telling where her work will take her throughout the day. A quick glance at the office’s posting of "In and Out" of the office shows most reporters are out on assignment throughout the day.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Monday are filled with hunting down stories; Tuesdays are primarily reserved for filing completed stories so a Wednesday deadline can be met. The Cranston Herald publishes on Thursday.
With a weekly deadline, Fox ends up talking to too many people throughout the week. Constantly on the lookout for a different angle, she overwhelms herself with information so her story doesn’t make her look like she is "Johnny come late to the game," she said.
"You never know where you will end up," she said. "It’s much better than a 9-to-5 day sitting behind a desk rotting away."
Fox said she is eager to on take the adventures reporting can bring to her. "Right now I’m young and crazy. You have do what you want," she said.
As a woman, she questions the ability to maintain a reporting job when she settles down and gets married. "I don’t know how the good ones do it," she said laughing.
From behind her corner desk, Fox finds a range of personalities when examining the room. "You wonder who’s the normal one," she said. "We work well because we are all so different."
The most riveting story Fox has ever told was following the attacks on Sept. 11. Yet, she said it was one of the easier stories to write. "Escape from the 67th floor" told the story of Marie Genest, a Cranston resident, who was attending a business meeting in the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11. "Her story is so amazing," she noted.
"Yes, I typed it and put it in the paper but all I was doing was recording what she was saying," she said.
Description and imagery laced the article, which appeared in the Herald on Sept. 20. Five-word paragraphs stylize her writing and add emphasis throughout the piece. Her story captivates readers, not only for its subject matter but also for its story telling. She relies on a chronological account to tell the story of the horrific day and lets direct quotations tell the rest.
While Fox said this was quite possibly the only story that touched all of her readers, she said she couldn’t pinpoint a story she is most proud of.
"Every week there is a different story you are proud of. Every time you are writing a story you have to get excited about it," Fox said.
Other stories were more controversial. Fox recalled a story she wrote about a family in Ridgewood Estates in Cranston who owned a mini-horse they kept on their property. She talked to neighbors and was able to weave the problems they had with the owners into her story. The following day she received a phone call from the owner who questioned why she needed to get both sides of the story. She laughed at his question when telling the story, explaining that this was one of the first elements of reporting.
Among her greatest challenges is finding the most effective way to make the most boring people sound interesting.
"It’s telling their story and making it so people want to read it," she said.
Fox also finds taking an outsider’s perspective is difficult. "Not caring is always a struggle. You’re not allowed to interject how you feel."
Her weakness as a writer lies in editorial writing. "It’s a fine combination or how you feel based on facts," she said. Fox said she enjoys editorial writing when she covers an emotional issue she wants to take a stance on.
One editorial Fox is proud of, "Time to talk," offered advice to remedy the problem at hand. The week before the editorial was written the City Council meeting made residents wait to speak until the end of the meeting, about midnight. Seeing that the meeting should have been approached differently so residents wouldn’t have to wait for the council members to hack through the rest of their business, she suggested the project be tackled in several workshops so residents could voice their opinions too.
Fox’s audience is the people of Cranston and she doesn’t try to write up or down. "I’m not trying to impress the mayor," she said.
Fox identifies Howell as her greatest mentor for reporting. "He’s very good at giving people opportunities. In high school I was treated as a regular staff writer," she said.
Fox said he gave her great advice when she applied to Rhode Island College. "He said ‘don’t major in journalism. Major in something you love and like,’" she said. Believing journalism and history are a good fit, Fox persued the subject that interested her most: U.S. history.
Family is important to Fox, who is the oldest of five children — the youngest is 8 years old. Adding a touch of humor, Fox said all five have the same parents — something she feels is important to note in an age where that is uncommon.
"I have a very supportive family," she said. "They think I’m a lunatic for wanting long hours and little pay."
Fox was born in Rhode Island to PJ and Wendy Fox and continues to live with them in Cranston.