[1] In 2013, RISN acquired the Yuma Sun and the Porterville Recorder from Freedom Communications.
[6] The corporation's first two named officers, Melanie Radler (president) and Roland McBride (vice president and treasurer), were both Illinois residents connected with Conrad Black's former Hollinger International newspaper chain.
[1] McBride also served as CFO of American Publishing Co., a former Hollinger subsidiary, and was said in an indictment to have aided Black's and the elder Radler's misappropriation of $5.5 million in connection with the sale of some newspaper properties from Hollinger to Horizon.
In August 2023, The Chariho Times and The Coventry Courier, two of RISN's weekly Southern Rhode Island Newspapers, announced on that they were "ceasing publication...[due to] rising costs, fewer resources and decreased local advertising revenue".
[12] In April 2013, an assistant editor at The Narragansett Times plagiarized the lede (the first paragraph of a news story) from an article in a competitor newspaper, the South County Independent[15].