April 2026

After spending the last two years here at the University of Rhode Island and inside The Good Five Cent Cigar, it is hard to believe that my time here is running out, and soon I’ll be moving on from being a student. I remember going to my first meeting at The Good Five Cent Cigar…

I remember the first time I heard about The Cigar’s long production nights, nobody ever had anything good to say about them. I was just a freshman at the time. I had just finished an internship during my senior year of high school working for the Warwick Beacon, and I thought that I was going…

It started in a crowded room, sequestered in the basement of Memorial Union. Or maybe it was a sunny New England day next to a tri-fold. Maybe even sooner, at a lunch table 150 miles away and four years ago. There are hundreds of origins to this story. Before I had time to sort them…

If there is one highlight from my time at the University of Rhode Island, it was my career at The Good Five Cent Cigar. After a failed attempt at getting into URI’s College of Business following my transfer from the Community College of Rhode Island, I switched my major to journalism. I started taking stories…

I honestly didn’t have a clear plan for where I fit on campus yet in my second year at the University of Rhode Island; I was trying a little bit of everything, and somewhere along the way, I found myself at a meeting for The Good Five Cent Cigar. A new, terrified sports media major…

I consider myself to be a quiet person when it comes to a lot of things. I’m friendly, but like many others, I tend to be nervous when meeting new people and doing new things.  I remember my first day at The Good Five Cent Cigar. It was my very first Monday night meeting in…

If you told 18-year-old Casey Chan-Smutko that she would find a group of amazing people who would shape her life at the University of Rhode Island, she’d look at you in disbelief. I was anxious from my very first step into The Good Five Cent Cigar office, but Cigar alum and mentor Imani Fleming ‘22…

My love for broadcast journalism began at fifteen years old. As cliché as this sounds, broadcast has always been part of my life. I knew when transferring to the University of Rhode Island, I wanted to keep my broadcast journey strong, and that next stop would be with The Cigar.  My main goal as the…