Somerville Wire

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EDITORIAL: SOMERVILLE NEWS MEDIA THEN AND NOW

Transcript & Journal website front page on March 29 2023. Screenshot by Jason Pramas for the Somerville Wire.

[T]hat is what I want Somerville readers to understand. My Somerville Media Fund and Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism board, staff, and volunteer colleagues have been joining me in warning that our city is well on the way to becoming a news desert since early 2019.

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 […]

EDITORIAL: DONATE TO THE SOMERVILLE MEDIA FUND!

Somerville Media Fund banner

A holiday appeal to help support professional journalism from local nonprofits Somerville Media Center and Somerville Wire (Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism) It’s tough to have a democracy without professional news outlets producing the carefully curated information people need to be engaged residents of their communities week in and week out. With major news corporations […]

EDITORIAL: SOMERVILLE MEDIA FUND GIVES FIRST TWO GRANTS

Somerville Media Fund banner

Somerville Media Center and Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism get equal shares of donations raised from community members I’m pleased to report that about 20 Somervillians became the first donors to the new Somerville Media Fund this spring. Generously giving $2,330.02 to help the Fund’s initial two member news organizations—Somerville Media Center and Boston Institute […]

VIDEO: JOURNALISTS DISCUSS PROBLEMS REPORTING RECENT DAVIS SQUARE DEATH

Screenshot of Marc Levy and Jason Pramas video. Image by Jason Pramas.

Share concerns about collapse of local news media and stonewalling by Somerville officials Early on Wednesday, May 11, 2022, a person died in the middle of Davis Square in Somerville, Mass., USA. No news outlet reported on it … and the City of Somerville and Somerville Police Department said nothing about the incident to the […]

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 […]

EDITORIAL: SHIRA LAUCHAROEN SAYS GOODBYE

After a wonderful year serving Somerville, the reporter begins new steps Ever since I began my work as assistant director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, I knew that I should be prepared for the unexpected. This local news project, the Somerville Wire, a publication of BINJ’s Somerville News Garden project, was in many […]