David Scharfenberg

Latest Articles

The Phoenix cleans up

Huzzahs
We're just back from the New England Newspaper & Press Association's annual awards gala at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers — $8 beers! — and we've got a nice little stash to report.
By PHOENIX STAFF | February 16, 2012

Awards for the melancholy

Gala Dept.
Any gathering of journalists these days is, inevitably, a bifurcated affair: half-liquor-fueled bonhomie and half-dark talk of an uncertain future.
By PROVIDENCE PHOENIX STAFF | May 12, 2011

Dueling ideas

Maine's senators on cybersecurity
Both of Maine's senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, have backed cybersecurity legislation in hopes of avoiding or averting the catastrophes described in David Scharfenberg's main piece. But their approaches have been different, leading to conflicting bills in the US Senate.
By JEFF INGLIS | September 01, 2010

An education funding formula, hailed as a breakthrough, faces its critics

Fuzzy math
For years, Rhode Island was one of just two states in the union without a funding formula for its public schools. And then, for a time, it was the only state with that dubious dis-tinction.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 24, 2010

Have a weird summer!

Five Ocean State oddities worth seeking out
We take you to places a little less predictable and, perhaps, a little less scenic.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 16, 2010

Pols and blowhards beware: PolitiFact is coming

As the ProJo turns
The Providence Journal , facing the newspaper industry's twin demons of declining circulation and plummeting advertising revenue, is in an intense period of reinvention.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 09, 2010

Making waves

Can WRNI supplant the ProJo as the state’s news king?
Rhode Island’s upstart National Public Radio affiliate, WRNI, aims to be nothing less than a major media player here. And in the space of just a couple of years, the station has taken some impressive first steps.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 10, 2010

A Rhode Island filmmaker’s tribute to the Good War

Heroes
Amid the moral ambiguity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the handwringing over weapons of mass destruction, drone attacks, and the rights of detainees — there is something startling about the raw patriotism of the documentary Navy Heroes of Normandy .
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 02, 2010

Privacy concerns make facebook the new bad guy

Networks
There was, for a time, a pretty clear moral hierarchy in the tech sector. Microsoft was the evil overlord, Apple the virtuous underling.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 26, 2010

Balls of fire

Porn stars, witch doctors, elephant farts, and the worst soccer team on the planet take center stage at this summer’s World Cup
For one month every four years, the United States — try as it might — can’t impose its vacuous culture on the rest of the planet. The World Cup arrives and the Americans are, at best, an afterthought.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG AND LANCE GOULD | June 01, 2010

Can the Netroots triumph in Rhode island?

On the Hustings
Stories of State Representative David Segal’s nascent, underdog run for Congress invariably make a nod to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. And rightly so.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 19, 2010

Patrick Lynch’s labor problem

Unions
For Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, candidate for governor, labor matters.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 19, 2010

Sound Session lives on

Festivals
Donald King, former artistic director for the Providence Black Repertory Company, gets the queries quite frequently these days.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 12, 2010

How Rhode Island can eliminate homelessness

The concept is as simple as it is radical: give the homeless a place to live, with no strings attached
Making it a reality is a matter of political will.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 14, 2010

A media market splintered

Online
The fragmentation of the local media market, long predicted, is finally a reality.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 05, 2010

A Soviet submarine finally meets its demise

Relics
Out on Allens Avenue in Providence, Rhode Island is finally saying goodbye to the Cold War.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 28, 2010

Shaking up the school system

The Reformer
Rhode Island education commissioner Deborah Gist’s take-charge style could make a winner of a state that often seems destined to fail. But critics say her free-market approach won’t work.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 21, 2010

Joe Paolino weighs a different kind of mayoral run

The Independent
It had been rumored for some time.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 14, 2010

Local heroes 2010

We are all in their debt
In the 13th annual edition of the Providence Phoenix’s Best issue, we highlight people and organizations who are doing exceptionally good work.
By PROVIDENCE PHOENIX STAFF | April 15, 2010

The first Latino mayor?

Angel Taveras’s moment suddenly arrives
Until recently, to talk about Angel Taveras was to talk about the future.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 15, 2010

A wind farm — and a governor’s legacy — hang in the balance

Not Easy Being Green
With Governor Carcieri’s second and final term coming to an end, it is time to think about the “L” word — legacy.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 08, 2010

Smith Hill weighs a ban on the under-21 crowd

The Fun Police
Seasoned partiers will recall that about a decade ago our august legislature considered barring anyone under age 21 from Rhode Island night clubs in a bid to curb underage drinking.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 31, 2010

WPRO swaps two big personalities

Spring Forward
Talk-radio listeners could be forgiven for wondering if WPRO sprung a bit too far forward this week when Buddy Cianci's show begun airing at 2 pm instead of the usual 10 am.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 17, 2010

Down ballot drama

Important races to watch in '10
The race for governor and the scramble to replace retiring Representative Patrick J. Kennedy have obsessed Rhode Island's chattering class. But all the talk has obscured an intriguing set of "down ballot" races for lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, and secretary of state.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 10, 2010

David Byrne and the Termite Towers

Cycling
Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline's second annual Senator Claiborne Pell Lecture on Arts and Humanities wasn't really about the arts. Or the humanities.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 10, 2010

Ken Miller just can’t win

Brown biology professor attacked by Darwin-hating fundies and leftie atheists alike
What’s an honorable man to do?
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 03, 2010

Amid the gloom, a one-man optimism offense

Chins Up Dept.
Seven or eight years ago, with the state's economy aflutter and Providence in ascendance, Scott Wolf thought Rhode Island was finally starting to shed its inferiority complex.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 24, 2010

Seven years later, a tale of recovery

The Fire
It has been seven years since fire tore through the Station nightclub in West Warwick, killing 100 people and scarring thousands more. And still, the story unwinds.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 17, 2010

What now?

Kennedy's exit rewrites the political game book.
Representative Patrick J. Kennedy's campaigns were always about something far larger than Rhode Island's First Congressional District, which snakes from Burrillville down through the Blackstone Valley and into Newport.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 17, 2010

‘Wonderful Wickenden Street’ crumbles

Art Dept.
At the end of Wickenden Street, just off the roadway, construction equipment stood guard over piles of steel and rubble: remnants of an old Route 195 overpass taken down over the last month or so as part of a larger effort to shift the highway.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 10, 2010