Colleen Cronin covers rural communities in Rhode Island for ecoRI News, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on environmental and social justice issues. Prior to joining ecoRI, Cronin worked as a digital producer and metro correspondent at The Boston Globe, writing education stories and breaking news overnight. She’s also worked on a year-long project investigating the opioid epidemic in Rhode Island, freelanced for The New York Times, and interned at People Magazine. Cronin is bilingual and received her bachelor’s degree in English from Brown in 2021, where she covered state and local politics, the college admissions scandal, and the university’s response to COVID-19 for The Brown Daily Herald. She eventually worked her way up to the role of editor-in-chief and president.
Beat: Environmental issues in rural areas
Municipalities outside of Providence are mostly rural, and the environmental pressures facing these communities (and their ecosystems) are many. This beat reports those stories, such as drinking water from wells found to have PFAS, chemicals that can cause cancer, and the Indigenous people's ties to the environment.