Patriots beat writer Shalise Manza Young is the latest scribe set to leave the Providence Journal's sports section.

Boston Sports Media Watch had this yesterday:

Young announced the news on both Twitter and Facebook this afternoon. On the latter, she posted:

Providence Journal executive editor Tom Heslin indicated to a Common Cause audience last October that the ProJo was likely to experiment with a new approach for Web content in the new year. That moment is fast approaching, reports Ted Nesi of the Providence Business News:

Former ProJo staffer Mark Arsenault scored one of the best media coups in recent history with his detailed Rhode Island Monthly explanation of US Representative Patrick Kennedy's decision to leave office. Even more amazing is how Arsenault had the story in hand three weeks before word started leaking about Kennedy's planned departure.

Joe McDonald, the Providence Journal's hard-working and talented young sports writer, is leaving for ESPN.COM. McDonald, an energetic reporter with a passion for baseball and hockey, was a comer on the  Boston Red Sox beat, which he assumned when Sean McAdam left the ProJo. Maybe this is yet another sad comment on the decline of newspapers, but in the days when dead-tree journalism ruled, it was unusual of for a talented writer like McAdam and a young guy with McDonald's potential to leave  print, unless it was for a bigger market newspaper.

Media Nation, my ex-colleague Dan Kennedy's blog, is a must-read for people interested in the evolution of media. And Kennedy had an interesting post yesterday exploring the usefulness and legitimacy of government support* for public-interest reporting. An excerpt:

Friends and fans of former ProJo scribe/mystery writer Mark Arsenault will have a chance to send him off in style tomorrow evening before his wife, Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer Levitz, and he embark on a new life in Atlanta.

The move comes after the WSJ recently announced plans to close its Boston bureau. Levitz, remembered as a talented writer at the ProJo, has accepted an assignment with the WSJ in Georgia. 

As Scott notes in his previous post, Lincoln Chafee is out of the gate with some specifics in a campaign thus far more noticeable for their absence. And as befits a modern campaign, Chafee has the obligatory Twitter feed.

The long-ago 1970s were summed up as "the Me Decade." That seems quaint, of course, given the leadup to last year's fiscal meltdown. Time Magazine recently got a jump on the year in review stuff, dubbing this outgoing decade the worst ever. The magazine went a step further, saying we have met the enemy, and it is us:

Via Romenesko. The demise of the trade publication of the newspaper industry says a lot about the current media moment.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews -- whose recent exchange with Bishop Thomas Tobin was must-view watching for Rhode Island political junkies -- exemplifies the leap from to broadcasting made by some former staffers (Matthews formerly worked for the late Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill).