Steward of local news speaks to 33 years reporting
One of the newest inductees of the Rhode Island Press Hall of Fame is set to join some of Rhode Island’s most acclaimed news journalists. PHOTO CREDIT: newportri.com
Thinking of a lede in your head on the drive back from covering an event or after an exciting interview is what keeps many journalists coming back to the newsroom for more.
From enthralling interviews with the likes of Mickey Rooney and Elvis fanatics, to the memorialization of soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice, longtime Newport Daily News reporter Jim Gillis, ‘81, has had the freedom to cover all corners of life as a steward of local news.
“You talk to so many people, and what I like doing is I like talking to people from all walks,” Gillis said.
This year Gillis will be inducted into the Rhode Island Journalism Hall of Fame, following a two-year induction delay due to the pandemic.
“It shows that at least somebody thinks highly of some of the stuff you’ve done,” he said. “I mean, Rhode Island is a small pool but it’s also, you know, it’s just nice to be thought of and know that the work you’ve put in is valued.”
A close friend of Gillis, University of Rhode Island External Relations and Communications Assistant Director Dave Lavallee, spoke highly of his reporting abilities.
“I continue to be really proud of folks who come from URI journalism and The Good Five Cent Cigar and I don’t know if anyone represents old-time, solid, fair, great reporting [more] than Jim Gillis,” Lavallee said.
After spending 33 years at the Newport Daily News and understanding what it means to report on Rhode Island communities, Gillis said local news outlets provide information that people rely on that they would not be able to find anywhere else. However, he said that it has been a struggle to convince people to spend money on their local newspapers.
“You know, people think Facebook is news, and it’s not,” he said.
Story tips can be found on Facebook though, which Gillis said he takes into account when writing his column Spare Change for the outlet. Gillis began writing the column in 1986 and continues to do so presently. It started as a one-off column, according to him, and features stories about topics ranging from favorite films filmed in Newport to the local impact of hurricanes.
Having the freedom to cover different topics as a local news reporter is an advantage of the career path, according to Gillis, as opposed to covering national news in a specific area such as political or scientific reporting.
However, some drawbacks to being a local reporter Gillis said include people knowing who you are. Years ago, Gillis said he received numerous borderline-racist letters from a person who signed them as “Mencken” after early 20th-century journalist H.L. Mencken, who was a controversial columnist at the time. He also received a dead squid in the mail around that same time with no attached note.
One day, Gillis ran into a man who started ranting at him in a 7-Eleven and in a separate neighborhood on the same day. The man said a phrase during his ranting and raving which Gillis recalled from a letter that “Mencken” had used before and called him out on it. He never received a letter from him again.
“The drawback also is that you’re in a small area so people have an idea of who you are and if they want to send you a piece of dead squid in the mail they can, I guess,” Gillis said.
Gillis was not the only one of his parents’ children to enter the field of journalism, as his sister Cindy Gillis, ‘83, would go on to work in medical publications, including International Meetings & Science.
As children, Gillis and his sister were raised around newspapers and broadcast news in their home. He even said that their landlord would throw papers from the first floor up to their third-floor apartment for the family to read once she had finished.
“We had newspapers everywhere; we always watched the news,” Gillis said. “I was kind of just hooked from there.”
After his father, a World War II veteran, died when Gillis was in seventh grade, he lost interest in school and his grades dropped. High school is where Gillis said he began to “rebound” when his junior-year English teacher encouraged him to pursue journalism and recommended URI’s journalism program.
“I had my heart set on this so, you know, it’s a good thing I had some skill for it because it would’ve been heartbreaking if I wasn’t any good at it,” he said.
Throughout his journalism career, Gillis faced threats and danger, but none were bigger than one that he had to deal with for thirteen years and stuck around even after his career ended.
In 2007, Gillis found out that he had a major kidney infection when he began acting strange and had trouble swallowing. He went to the emergency room where he discovered he had a bladder infection that had reached his kidneys and led to kidney shutdown.
When Gillis got bloodwork done, he was “not far from being dead.” The bloodwork showed that his creatinine levels, which are used to assess kidney function. The average adult male’s creatinine levels range from 0.74 to 1.35 according to the Mayo Clinic; Gillis’ was 18.6 which was “off the charts.”
“When they put ‘end-stage’ next to your name, that kind of gets your attention,” he said.
From 2012 through 2020, when he received a kidney transplant, Gillis went to get dialysis treatments three times a week to improve kidney function and remove toxins from his blood. This led him to retire as a full-time reporter at the Newport Daily News in 2013.
He received the transplant on March 9, 2020, as hospitals just started becoming overcrowded with COVID-19 patients and not allowing visitors. His wife, Julie Bisbano, was “tremendously supportive” throughout his kidney treatments, transplant surgery and afterwards, during his recovery.
“It’s a once in a lifetime experience, I hope,” Gillis said. “It is something that changes your perspective, and makes you see the world differently.”
While he was still a journalism student at URI, Gillis wrote for the Cigar where he learned how to report on campus news and developed an understanding of story structure.
The Cigar gave Gillis a place to make lifelong friends who helped him get through his mother’s passing in his sophomore year of college.
“Those are things that stay with you no matter how old you get,” Gillis said in reference to the support and friendship of his fellow Cigar members.