About
Edward Achorn, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Distinguished Commentary, is the deputy editorial pages editor of The Providence Journal. He has won numerous writing awards and his work appears in Best Newspaper Writing, 2007-2008.
Achorn’s “must read” weekly columns often touch on baseball, which he considers the best game ever invented, but usually center on the weird and contentious politics of Rhode Island. He inspired revolutionary change in the state’s Constitution, championing an amendment that balanced power and put an end to a 340-year legacy of inordinate control by the legislature. Pulitzer judges cited his “clear, tenacious call to action against government corruption in Rhode Island,” while Common Cause Rhode Island declared: “Ed Achorn’s clear trumpet turned the tide in this historic battle.”
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News
Daily Diary: April 9, 1884: Radbourn and the munchies
(A daily diary of the greatest season a major-league pitcher ever had.)
While Old Hoss Radbourn douses himself with brimstone and treacle to “thin his blood” for spring and a new season of baseball, he is apparently over a more serious health threat.
George Washington Bradley, a top professional pitcher who at...
Column: Public-employee unions act as if they still don’t get it
For months, this newspaper has been reporting about Mayor Taveras’s warning that Providence faces bankruptcy, and could run out of money by the end of June.
Which made a statement by a firefighter at last week’s City Council meeting rather staggering. In a packed, emotionally charged session, the council was preparing...
Column: Shrinking the First Amendment destroys our freedom
The First Amendment leads off the Bill of Rights for a reason: It is the foundation of all our freedoms. The First Amendment can be exploited by the rich and powerful, God knows, but it also provides the means to challenge authority and fight the worst abuses in our society....
Rave reviews greet Fifty-nine in '84
Washington Post: “An astonishing book … a romantic book, equal parts heroic quest, tragic tale and doomed love story.”
Los Angeles Times: “It’s the vibrancy of his story that resonates, the sense of Radbourn and these others not as historical figures but as human beings. The game they played was brutal,...
Column: Financial disasters can change the political playbook
Have our financial woes become so scary that Americans are actually prepared to reward leaders for courageously confronting those problems?
There’s some evidence of that in, of all places, Rhode Island.
In recent polls, the two most popular politicians here, by far, are liberal Democrats who have confronted fiscal realities, even though...
Column: Lessons from the day I got caught at Fenway Park
(This is a version of a column published on April 17, 2007, reprised here in honor of Fenway Park’s 100th birthday this month:)
This time of year always brings to mind the valuable lesson I learned at the tender age of 15: If you’re going to play hooky, you might not...
