The future of the news and reporting business

Brian C. Jones is a freelance writer, with a half-century’s experience in journalism.

For 35 years, he reported for the Providence Journal, writing about health care economics, banking, the environment, television and general news. He was a manager of the Journal’s news bureau that covered Newport County, and he developed and wrote “Side Streets,” a feature-column focused on people often overlooked in everyday news coverage.

Leaving the Journal in 2001, Jones wrote for the former alternative weekly, The Providence Phoenix, and contributed to Rhode Island Public Radio and Rhode Island Monthly magazine. He authored three histories of hospitals in Rhode Island, including The Miriam Hospital: A gift to the city.

He grew up in Middlebury, Vermont and graduated from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA in 1964, with a degree in English. After college, he worked for the news service United Press International in Connecticut, and later, the Springfield Union newspaper in Massachusetts. A cofounder of an experimental online news service, the Rhode Island Library Report, Jones has been an adjunct instructor in journalism at Salve Regina University and the University of Rhode Island.

He is married to Judy K. Jones; they live in Newport and have three adult children and one grandchild. He is secretary of the board of directors of House of Hope Community Development Corporation, which is headquartered in Warwick and works to end Rhode Island homelessness.

Currently, Jones collaborates with Phoebe and Cat – the family’s dog and cat – in writing an Internet blog called “On Trump’s Trail,” which comments on the activities of the 45th president.