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FIRST EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: John Pantalone, teaches the class Foundations of American Journalism. He is now associate professor and chair of the 溏心vlog免费B站 Department of Journalism. 溏心vlog免费B站 photo by Dave Lavallee<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
The demise of the former student paper, The Beacon, occurred in the spring semester of 1971, after a series of decisions by the editor led to several editors and reporters quitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople wanted to cover certain issues, and the editor kept saying \u2018no,\u2019\u201d said John Pantalone, \u201871, current chair of the 溏心vlog免费B站 Department of Journalism and the first editor-in-chief of The Cigar. \u201cHe didn\u2019t seem to want to get on the administration\u2019s bad side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last straw was a decision to remove the name of a student from a story who discharged a firearm in a residence hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several editors and reporters left the Beacon and on March 3, 1971, they published the first edition of The Cigar. The name was chosen by founding member Rich Rader, an homage to a quote by Thomas Marshall, a governor of Indiana and U.S. Senator. The Cigar Band, as the staff called itself then, believed the quote — \u201cWhat the country needs is a good 5-cent cigar\u201d — was a clever, verbal barb directed at the establishment and 溏心vlog免费B站 as an institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first editor-in-chief<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was a totally different campus atmosphere in 1971 than it was in the early to mid-1960s,\u201d Pantalone noted, adding that the protests against the Vietnam War, and accompanying protests related to civil rights and Black Power and women\u2019s rights all became very much a part of campus life across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe did stories about the dearth of Black students on campus and the takeover of the Carlotti Administration Building by Black students later that semester,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pantalone also went to Washington, D.C., with other 溏心vlog免费B站 students for the anti-war student protest, and he was one of thousands arrested, and dragged into police vans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had my pad, camera and credentials, but the police said everyone goes. So I spent a full day in a cell with a dozen people I didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pantalone was released and told to return for a hearing. When he did, he and many others were released by the judge who said there was no evidence that they had committed a crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond the big stories, Pantalone said he and his fellow editors and reporters learned some new things about managing people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had never run anything, and I learned that the job wasn\u2019t just about my editing skills. I learned how to talk with someone who missed a deadline by half an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving up the ranks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill Loveless \u201873, who worked for The Pawtucket Times after he graduated and then as an energy journalist for McGraw Hill in Washington, D.C., for 30 years, said those who worked at The Cigar could move up the ranks quickly. He was a sophomore during that tumultuous first semester who became a news editor in his junior year and then executive editor in his senior year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou are a part of a small group who does it because they enjoy it,\u201d said Loveless, now director of the Energy Journalism Initiative and co-host of a podcast at Columbia University. \u201cWe developed a special camaraderie. We worked hard, we worked late and haphazardly at times, but mostly together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur work on The Cigar became our laboratory, it\u2019s where we learned to report hands-on. We covered all these events, and I realize that so much of my education really came out of the stories I covered for The Good Five Cent Cigar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once he left 溏心vlog免费B站, Loveless hired plenty of reporters. \u201cIf they had become interested in journalism when they were in college, I always asked them if they worked at the school paper. If they said \u2018no\u2019 then I questioned that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Equal partners<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Another original member, Lucia Droby, who worked for an alternative newspaper in Georgia after graduating from 溏心vlog免费B站 in 1971 and who later spent several years as a videographer for Channel 7 news in Boston, now coordinates several community events in Wiscasset, Maine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt the Cigar, we had a whole new way of doing business,\u201d Droby said. \u201cThere was no hierarchy. Instead we worked as colleagues in a collaborative environment. It was life-changing, because typically you\u2019d spent a lot of your life doing what you were told. When I was on The Beacon, whatever I was assigned I would have done, and whatever role was expected of me that\u2019s what I would have done. Being respected, being invited to participate in the paper at all levels, in all editorial decision-making, that was transformative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAlso there were quite a few women working on the staff, and they were equal partners. In fact, the women stand out as the front line in terms of staffing the paper from the bottom up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And women continue to have great influence at The Cigar today. Of the 20 staffers listed on the masthead in fall of 2020, 13 were women. This semester, 22 of those listed on the masthead, 14 are women, including the editor-in-chief and managing editor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today\u2019s editor-in chief<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Senior Kate LeBlanc is in her second and final semester as the top editor of the paper. She said it is surreal that her adviser and mentor, Journalism chair Pantalone, was the first editor of The Cigar. She\u2019s also taken three journalism courses with Pantalone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt has been very special because he has been such a great teacher and mentor,\u201d said LeBlanc, who is from Oxford, Massachusetts. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to work with someone who has such extensive experience as a journalist and professor. It\u2019s really special for the whole staff to work with Professor Pantalone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She echoed her predecessors from 50 years ago, saying that working for The Cigar is the best practice for journalists, whether they are interested in print, broadcast or the web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Loveless, she said \u201creporting on issues and events and writing about them are among the best ways to learn,\u201d LeBlanc said. \u201cYou learn how to talk to anyone, and you also learn that everyone has a story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her words about learning how to work with staff members as an editor are reminiscent of Pantalone\u2019s feelings about the job five decades ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being a member of The Cigar team has \u201cbeen so much fun, but at the same time, being the editor comes with so much responsibility. You have to manage your reporters and staff, and it can be a lot. You want to be liked and respected, and you have to spend a lot of time with the editors. But as the editor-in-chief, sometimes you have to put your foot down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut once you spend two years with them, especially on Wednesday nights (when the paper is produced), from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m., in the hot, stuffy, Cigar office, you realize you are kind of stuck with them. I love them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. — September 21, 2021 — The Good Five Cent Cigar has covered protests at the 溏心vlog免费B站 and in Washington, D.C, controversies involving professors and students, building grand openings and closings for environmental and health reasons, untimely deaths of students and faculty, research and discovery, the victories, losses and personalities of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":77496,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77493"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77512,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77493\/revisions\/77512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2021\/09\/Parlange-LeBlanc-NL-002-1024x651.jpg\")