This week, a reminder that politics is not a spectator sport. I was listening to a recent Noam Chomsky appearance on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. And the two giants of the American left sparred a bit on particulars but agreed that humanity faces two existential threats: global warming and a revival of the […]
THE FALL OF THE GE BOSTON DEAL, PART II
AG Healey should form independent commission to investigate the failed agreement Last week in the first installment of this two-part column, I ran through the many problems with the January 2016 deal between General Electric, the city of Boston, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that has now collapsed for all intents and purposes. […]
THE FALL OF THE GE BOSTON DEAL, PART I
The official narrative and the real story Readers might feel that this should be a time for me to take a victory lap. The GE Boston deal that I criticized from the moment it was made public in January 2016 has crashed to Earth a bit over three years later. The now-failing multinational […]
SOMERVILLE COMMUNITY SUMMIT: CONVENING A CITY TO IMPROVE ITS NEWS MEDIA
EDITORIAL Last Saturday, DigBoston, our nonprofit wing Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ), and our frequent partner the community access television station Somerville Media Center (SMC) turned out over 100 Somerville residents to the ONCE ballroom on Highland Ave to talk to 15 area journalists about local issues and happenings that they thought […]
PUBLIC BAD. PRIVATE GOOD? BOSTON HERALD’S ATTACK ON MASSHOUSING HIGHLIGHTS DOUBLE STANDARD IN AMERICAN JOURNALISM
Over the last several days, the Boston Herald has had its knives out in no less than three articles and two editorials against MassHousing—an independent, quasi-public agency created in 1966 and charged with providing financing for affordable housing in Massachusetts. Readers can be forgiven for assuming that such lavish attention from a publication […]
WHO I WRITE FOR: A MEDITATION
Like pretty much every journalist, I think about who I am writing for* from time to time. Most writers aren’t just sending messages into the ether, after all. Unless they are writing for therapeutic reasons. Or they are diarists. But even diarists are typically writing for some future audience they have in mind. Be […]
WHY GATEHOUSE’S BOSTON ‘MEGACLUSTER’ IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY
No corporation should own most newspapers in a region In last week’s Apparent Horizon, “GateHouse Editorial Flacks for Mass Retailers,” I dissected an editorial, “The benefits of a teen minimum wage,” calling for a subminimum wage for Bay State teenage workers that turned out to have run in over two dozen eastern Mass […]
GATEHOUSE EDITORIAL FLACKS FOR MASS RETAILERS
Calls for undermining the rising statewide minimum wage with a subminimum wage for teens A couple of days back I picked up a Cambridge Chronicle newspaper at a takeout joint I frequent. Opened it up. Skimmed the top story, and the week’s arrests. Then moved on to the editorial. And was stopped cold […]
A WINDOW INTO THE STATE HOUSE
Rep. Mike Connolly’s blog offers a critical look behind the curtain of Mass politics The Massachusetts State House is not a bastion of democracy. I think a growing number of people in the Commonwealth are pretty clear on that fact. Dominated for decades by a series of imperial House speakers, and to a […]
EDITORIAL: HOW TO WRITE FOR DIGBOSTON
To start the new year, I thought it would be helpful to discuss the question we get most often from our readers: “How can I start writing for DigBoston?” Our answer is simple at base. You get an idea for an article. You tell my colleagues and me about your idea via email. We […]
