KINGSTON, R.I. – Oct. 3, 2025 – The University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of Communication and Media has launched this fall The Community News Lab, a new initiative to bolster local news coverage in the state.

The News Lab consists of nine advanced students from the Department of Journalism and Public Relations who will partner with local publications in the R.I. Media Group and Ocean State Media. Other partners, including the websites EcoRI and The Providence Eye, will be added to the initiative this spring.

More than 2,000 newspapers across the country have folded since 2004, and many towns no longer have anyone reporting on government and community news. In Rhode Island, more than 68,000 people live in a town with no or limited media coverage, and the News Lab plans to change that. 

The students will cover five towns that have no or limited news coverage—Charlestown, Richmond, Hopkinton, Exeter and West Greenwich. Additionally, four reporters will cover news regarding regional education, the environment, agriculture and the fishing industry.

The students’ stories will publish in The Westerly Sun, The Narragansett Times, The Independent, The Standard Pendulum and the Kent County Daily Times. Stories will also appear on the web page of The Public’s Radio, the local National Public Radio affiliate.

“Community news labs provide students with experience in professional reporting, which will help them prepare for careers in journalism,” said Daniel S. Hunt, the department chair and News Lab creator. “But they also serve to close the information gap for residents who live in so-called news deserts.”

The News Lab students include Ellie Sennhenn, editor of The Good Five Cent Cigar —URI’s student newspaper—who will cover the environment; Maia Hembruff, the paper’s managing editor assisting with fact-checking and copy-editing; Johnny Ochsenfeld, a senior majoring in journalism and sports media communication covering the fishing industry; Caroline McCullough, an anthropology major covering agriculture; and Emily Morgan, a broadcast student who interned at Boston’s WHDH-TV 7 this summer who will cover West Greenwich and the education beat. Other town reporters include Wallitsch for Richmond; Dustin Thodde for Exeter; Katelyn Drenga for Hopkinton; and Mel Eusebio for Charlestown.

The Harrington School has outfitted a newsroom for the student journalists, who started work this semester and began providing content to the partners on Sept. 18. The first published story by Wallitsch, titled “Richmond to begin combing through administrator applications,” appeared Sept. 19 on The Westerly Sun’s front page.

The project is supported by the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News, which received a $7 million Knight Foundation/MacArthur Foundation grant last year to assist colleges and universities in launching news partnerships.

Betty J. Cotter, a URI journalism instructor and the News Lab’s editor, has been participating in UVM’s Community News Champions program, where she has worked with professors and media professionals from around the country. Cotter is also the former editor of the Independent and the Narragansett Times and was a reporter for The Day in New London, Conn., the Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin and the Narragansett Times. She writes a biweekly column for The Westerly Sun.

“Colleges and universities are doing amazing work to bring news to citizens, including buying failing newspapers, starting newsletters, podcasts and radio stations, and supplying stories to broadcast and print outlets,” Cotter said. “They have recognized the perils to democracy when the public lacks fair, objective reporting about how their government is operating.”

The public is invited to send tips to the News Lab at newslabeditor@uri.edu.