A second beginning Growing up, irreverently BY LISA PREVOST

I wish I’d been around for the edgy, beer-soaked beginnings of Rhode Island’s longest-lived alternative newspaper, but (story of my life) I showed up about 10 years too late. My arrival at the paper as news editor coincided with its second beginning, the one imposed by a corporate buyout.

When I first walked through the door, wearing the requisite peasant skirt and patchouli oil, the NewPaper’s Providence offices still bore all the trappings of a legitimate alternative newspaper. Then located at the seedy center of Washington Street, the space featured army surplus furniture, wall-to-wall carpeting stained irreversible shades of greenish-brown, the incongruous hum of radios tuned to different rock stations, and a respectable number of self-righteous columnists. The Boston-based Phoenix corporation had begun to make its mark, however — new Macs sat atop every desk, while a humorless guy in a suit sat in the publisher’s office.

Those initial changes were painless — every ensuing change elicited indignant howls of protest. Longtime NewPaper writers were certain of a Boston-based conspiracy to oust local voices or, worse, edit their copy. Activists who had long been guaranteed coverage of every sit-in or walkout now accused us of abandoning their causes. Miffed ex-employees founded the ambitious but short-lived NicePaper as a vehicle for anti-Phoenix invective. Sources questioned how we could sleep at night knowing that our paycheck came from a newspaper that promoted escort services, phone sex, and strip clubs.

While some of the grumbling was warranted, within a couple of years it was clear that, at least from a news perspective, The NewPaper had benefited from the deep pockets and relative distance of its new owner. If the Phoenix moneymen were unabashed in their eagerness to mine the state’s quietly flourishing skin trade, they were also unafraid to skewer the local institutions and assorted sacred cows that were indulging in their own dirty deeds.

This is not to say that the paper wasn’t force-fed a steady diet of stories from Boston, or that there weren’t frequent battles about whether a local story warranted play on the cover. But what the paper lost in local flavor (some might say parochialism) it gained in professionalism. Moreover, the editorial parameters dictated by Boston were broad enough to allow us tremendous leeway in what to cover. The Phoenix wanted what any publisher wants: well-written stories that would grab peoples’ attention. In effect, the paper’s potential became less about what Boston wanted than about what local writers were able to produce.

While we dedicated reams of newsprint to local politics and social issues, my favorite stories were those that honored the alternative tradition of irreverence. They weren’t always the longest pieces, or the most difficult to report. They were simply reminders that nobody, be it a Chafee or a socially-minded NewPaper writer, can definitively claim the moral high ground above the rest of us.

One early story of that ilk detailed the bizarre goings-on within the exclusive and highly secretive Twelfth Night Club. Reported by an enterprising Brown student with an inside source, the story revealed that the East Side club’s membership consisted solely of 24 wealthy, white, powerful men, many of whom were descendents of Rhode Island royalty (aka, the Five Families). All designated as either knights or squires, the men met regularly throughout the year, with the high point being a Twelfth Night Elizabethan-style feast at a lacquered table laden with goblets of rare wine and potted pigeons.

Coming not long after the US Supreme Court upheld a New York City law banning discrimination against women at private clubs, questions about Twelfth Night elitism drew somewhat . . . uh, emotional responses from members. Robert Goddard Jr. captured their collective sentiments best with his comment that the club wasn’t "anybody’s goddamned business — it’s still going to continue as is and there is nothing wrong with it."

Borders in Cranston, was similarly shocked (shocked!) that anyone would poke fun at their decision to book a Penthouse centerfold model to do a magazine signing at the store. The model featured was the girlfriend of Rhode Island’s favorite prizefighter, Vinny Pazienza but, nevertheless, wasn’t this still a porno promo at a family bookstore? Hardly, snapped the events coordinator, because a portion of the proceeds would benefit Rwandan refugees. I’m proud to say that piece cost us the Borders account.

Then there was Louis Fazzano’s response to our suggestion that plans to cut the Providence Journal Co. in on the convention center deal was not in taxpayers’ interests. Fazzano was then vice chairman of the Convention Center Authority, which had negotiated a deal that called for the Providence Journal Co. to contribute the financially ailing Omni Biltmore Hotel to the convention center construction plan. In return, the authority would invest $10 million to upgrade the outdated hotel. Taxpayers, we pointed out, would be stuck with the bill if either the convention center or the hotel ran at a loss.

"Why don’t you look at it in a more positive way?" hissed Fazzano when asked whether the deal amounted to a taxpayer bailout for the hotel’s owner, the Providence Journal. We weren’t the only ones wallowing in negativity, however — the legislature too failed to see the light.

A less humorous example concerns our stories about research conducted on indigent alcoholics without their consent at Rhode Island Hospital. Nobody was hurt by the research, which required nurses to draw additional vials of blood from alcoholics while they were sobering up in the emergency room. What was disturbing was that the hospital’s Institutional Review Board had agreed to waive informed consent requirements for that study, as well as, we later learned, another that tested accident victims for the presence of alcohol.

The nurse who ratted out the hospital made enough of a stink that he caught the attention of a congressional committee and federal regulators. After we obtained the regulators’ correspondence with the hospital about the need for tighter controls, we discovered that the hospital’s public relations director had attempted to discredit our coverage by alerting regulators that we were a free paper specializing in sensationalism and ads for phone sex.

Maybe so. But at least we weren’t exploiting homeless alcoholics.

Lisa Prevost is a freelance writer based in Connecticut.