Tiverton's Justin Katz Leads News Site For Conservative Think Tank

From the construction site to an online media office, Tiverton carpenter and blogger Justin Katz launched The Ocean State Current a little more than a month ago. It's the new journalism arm for the conservative think tank Rhode Island Center For Freedom and Prosperity.

Katz, the managing editor, said in a recent interview that the Current's emphasis will be on economic policy and good government, with a focus, on education policy, but will cover a broad range of issues stopping short, for the most part he says, of social issues.

Katz said Mike Stenhouse, CEO of the think tank, found there to be a need, in the local media landscape, for news covering local policy and politics collected and written with the eye of somebody who has a free-market, small-government perspective.

"So, he followed a model that has been repeated in many other states to create a news bureau," he said.

The mission of the Current is to leverage online multimedia to ensure that a well-informed public has the breadth of information required for healthy self governance, according to Katz, while integrating with the existing community of local news providers in all media in such a way as to find stories and convey perspectives that might otherwise be overlooked.

For the time being, Katz is the main source of content, with letters, op-eds, and other content welcome.

"It's high on my list of priorities, however, to find the resources to increase the number of contributors," he noted. "We will be looking toward advertising in the future, but for the time being, we're concentrating on proving the concept and building an audience."

Katz said that, hopefully, readers will develop a sense of the sorts of questions that a free-market, small-government perspective suggest and that most established media don't dig into.

"That's not necessarily a matter of bias," he said. "In the realm of policy, newsmakers tend to package their stories in a contrary way, and it's difficult for reporters who must ultimately rely on advertising generated by substantial reader- or viewership to take the time to explore every additional angle. That's part of the gap that the Current seeks to fill."

Katz said he will remain administrator of his conservative blog Anchor Rising, a site he launched in 2004 and had an immediate impact on the Rhode Island pundit landscape.

Katz has submitted several letters to the editor regarding Tiverton government issues, and published a column for several months on Tiverton-Little Compton Patch.

For more information, visit the Current's About Us page, a post by Katz titled "Another Start" and a post about the Current's launch on Anchor Rising.