The Boston Globe today scoops the ProJo with the news of a potential settlement, in a case against WPRI-TV, stemming from the February 2003 Station fire disaster (disclosure: I am an unpaid weekly panelist on WPRI's Newsmakers).

The Rhode Island television news outlet whose cameraman was filming inside The Station nightclub when a fire killed 100 people has reached a tentative $30 million settlement with families and survivors, the biggest civil settlement stemming from the 2003 tragedy so far, according to two sources familiar with the case.

Conspicuously absent from today's ProJo coverage of John Simmons's ascension to the top job at the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council is any mention of the recent Fund for Providence issue. Buddy Cianci and Dan Yorke, who have used this topic to deem Simmons unfit for the RIPEC job, will no doubt focus more criticism on this development today.

Although 1997, when the Dallas-based Belo Corporation bought the Providence Journal Company, was a whole different era in the media industry, the Journal Company's many TV stations -- and not the ProJo itself -- were the main attraction. It's not hard to see why: while newspapers, particularly one with a strong journalistic tradition like the Journal's, are prestigious properties to own, TV is where the big money is.