Contractors of Color

At some point every reporter needs to figure what kind of journalist they want to be (later they figure out what they actually are). After months of sitting behind a desk editing scripts, chasing press conferences and re-gurgitating daily stories I realized I wanted to investigate compelling cases of my own. 

But what?

I was reading a Providence Journal about a woman contractor who claimed she was cheated out of millions of dollars of materials and labor so that a larger contractor could secure a large, federal highway contract from the state. 

I knew absolutely nothing about contracting.

A quick google-based education revealed that in Rhode Island minority and women-owned businesses are called Disadvantaged Business Enterprises or DBEs. DBEs are entitled to 10% of federal highway contract dollars.

During an interview with a RIDOT official, he said that the current minority requirements were not serving people who were supposed to benefit from the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

My ears were perked.

Turns out in FY 2006 less than one percent of contracts had gone to Black, Hispanic and Asian contractors. 

I sent an e-mail out to as many minority businesses as I could copy from the DBE registry asking if they'd been discriminated against. Stan Cameron of the Black Contractors Association finally called and said we needed to talk.

I found myself on Broad St. in South Providence in the middle of a room of pissed-off black contractors with my microphone and mini-disk at my side. They knew the numbers and they weren't happy about it.

They didn't want to take business away women and Portuguese Americans (a special minority in RI). But, dammit, they wanted their businesses to thrive too.

I requested data from RIDOT to confirm the numbers.

Then I called a large white, male-owned general contractor and waited. Sure enough, right before I was about to put the story together I got my counterpoint.

I had to put the story together in a hurry after a month of planning. We were airing a 30 minute Summer-In-Review, I was training for my job and recruiting new anchors for WBRU. 

The story aired. Life went on. I submitted stories to the AP of Southern New England and shipped off to Greece for study abroad.

Two months later I got an e-mail from my freshman year news director. Contractors of Color was named Southern New England's best college investigation for 2008.

I was relieved more than anything. So often BRU news anchors operate in a vacuum, especially news directors who often go un-edited. There was some vindication there that my reporting skills hadn't completely evaporated. Mayber there was a future in this business after all...