The Providence Journal has gone outside the newspaper to hire a new Boston Red Sox beat writer. Taking the job that is vacant due to the departure of Joe McDonald for ESPN is Brian MacPherson, who has covered the team for the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Joe McDonald, the Providence Journal's hard-working and talented young sports writer, is leaving for ESPN.COM. McDonald, an energetic reporter with a passion for baseball and hockey, was a comer on the  Boston Red Sox beat, which he assumned when Sean McAdam left the ProJo. Maybe this is yet another sad comment on the decline of newspapers, but in the days when dead-tree journalism ruled, it was unusual of for a talented writer like McAdam and a young guy with McDonald's potential to leave  print, unless it was for a bigger market newspaper.

The movie Groundhog Day must be playing in editors heads at the ProJo's news desk these days. The state's newspaper of record continues day after day to make the same nettlesome historical mistake about the Kennedy family's service in the U.S. Congress. On today's front page, the paper again states that Patrick Kennedy's departure from Congress next January will mark the first time since 1947 that no Kennedy will be serving in Congress.

Two Page One stories leap from the dead-tree edition this week.

First was the story stating that Vincent A. ``Buddy'' Cianci, the former Providence Mayor and  current talk show scold, is going to tun for office. The story was little more than talk-show palaver, which Cianci himself confirmed. ``I'm not running,'' Cianci said with a knowing smile when asked about the report.

And why should he? The well-compensated radio talker has his perfect job - a little state's biggest chops-buster.

The Providence Journal has lost nearly 20 percent of its weekday print readers in the past year, as the paper raised the price of a single copy to $1 and laid off employees.

The Journal's average weekday circulation dropped to 106,875, compared with 131,620, as of Sept., 30, 2008, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Sunday circulation  was also down sharply, from 186,571 to 154,300.

Arthur Martone, the Providence Journal's well-respected longtime sports editor, is leaving the newspaper to take a job at Comcast New England, the cable channel that broadcasts Boston Celtics games and is expanding its sports web site coverage.

Common Cause of Rhode Island's annual meeting is set for Oct. 29 at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet in Cranston. The good government group is sponsoring a discussion about the future of newspapers. Tom Heslin, executive editor of the Providence Journal, will speak and answer questions. Because Journal executives historically do not speak to local media, the meeting may provide a good opportunity to question Mr. Heslin about the future of the Journal in an era of personnel and news hole shrinkage and the opportunity that  newspapers have on the web.

Journalists are known for taking note of the great and notorious, writing and airing elaborate obituaries of presidents and poets, knaves and novelists, entrepreneurs and raconteurs.

But last week, the Providence Journal newsroom, a passel of television and radio reporters and large slices of Rhode Island’s Cape Verdean and African-American communities paused to mourn a 41-year old woman who wasn’t famous or infamous.

Carol Montrond of Providence, longtime coordinator for the Providence Journal newsroom, died today of a brain aneurysm at Miriam Hospital. She was 41.

Random mid-week observations:

-- US Representative Jim Langevin isn't waiting for Elizabeth Dennigan to formally roll out her primary challenge. On Monday, his campaign team sent out a mass e-mail, foreshadowing future missives "to maintain open lines of communication with you about my work." And at Not for Nothing, David Scharfenberg has a post describing what might be called Langevin's pre-emptive strike against the abortion issue.