Somerville Wire

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SOMERVILLIANS DONATE $5,000 TO RESTART SOMERVILLE WIRE

Municipal news service can run for another few months, now accepting applications for a reporter gig Great news! Thanks to the 40 Somerville residents who donated the $5,000 we needed, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism has met our goal to restart publication of the Somerville Wire news service for another few months. This is […]

EDITORIAL: SOMERVILLE WIRE ON HIATUS UNTIL SPRING

BINJ Needs $15,000 to Pay a Quarter-Time Staff Reporter for a Year It has been almost four years since the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism held a well-attended community forum in the big room at (the sadly shuttered) ONCE club on Highland Ave. that led to the launch of our Somerville News Garden project. The […]

WHOSE STREETS? SHARED STREETS!

Broadway Bus Lanes Debate Between Michael Capuano and Chris Dwan at Somerville Media Center, November 9, 2022. Photo by Jason Pramas. Copyright 2022 Jason Pramas.

Capuano-Dwan Debate at SCATV Centers on Somerville Transportation Priorities and Public Input (Somerville Wire) – Two community leaders on different sides of the Broadway bus lane controversy sat down together last week to share their divergent views on transportation, accessibility, and accountability in Somerville. The hour-long debate brought together safe streets activist Chris Dwan and […]

EDITORIAL: NOW EVEN LESS NEWS IN SOMERVILLE

DigBoston box among the boxes of defunct newspapers in Union Square, Somerville. Photo by Jason Pramas. Copyright 2022 Jason Pramas.

DigBoston goes digital-only, yet another reason to donate to the Somerville Media Fund (Somerville Wire) – It’s rare that a journalist writes an editorial about an editorial, but careful readers may note that the principals of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism—Chris Faraone, John Loftus, and me—also run the commercial metro weekly newspaper DigBoston. A […]

DONATE TO THE SOMERVILLE MEDIA FUND!

Somerville Media Fund banner

Somerville Media Center and BINJ join forces to create municipal foundation to support nonprofit community journalism There can be no democracy at any level without strong journalism produced in the public interest. Yet here in Somerville, as in communities across the nation, we are on the verge of losing our professional local news outlets. In […]

EDITORIAL: MEDIA CONSOLIDATION ACCELERATES IN SOMERVILLE

Prototype "Medville Transnal" front page. Collage by Jason Pramas.

Gannett merges its Somerville Journal and Medford Transcript newspapers as BINJ’s Somerville News Garden project and the Somerville Media Center launch a new municipal foundation to fund local journalism Nearly three years ago, after hosting a community forum on the crisis in local journalism attended by 115 residents of Somerville, including representatives of over a […]

SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM IN NOV & DEC, FIRST $10,000 MATCHED DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR

givetobinj.org

Two-month Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism fundraiser to be amplified by the Institute for Nonprofit News and the Miami Foundation My message is simple this time out: Please give generously to the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism in November or December at givetobinj.org—and be aware that every individual donation of $1,000 or less (including the […]

WHAT IS THE SOMERVILLE WIRE?

Somerville Wire logo

BINJ staff and Somerville News Garden volunteers have not undertaken this effort to compete with existing or future news outlets in Somerville. We are simply working on creating a replicable model that cities and towns around Massachusetts and the US can use to stop their municipalities from turning into “news deserts,” in the parlance of journalism academics.