Jennifer Smith writes for CommonWealth Beacon and co-hosts its weekly podcast, The Codcast. Her areas of focus include housing, social issues, courts and the law, and politics and elections.
A California native who also lived in Utah, Jennifer has covered Massachusetts since 2011 for a variety of publications. She worked breaking news in the Boston Globe’s metro section and provided courtroom coverage of the Boston Marathon bomber trial for the international wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) while completing her undergraduate journalism degree at Northeastern University in Boston. For four years, Jennifer was a staff writer and later news editor for the Dorchester Reporter, covering her home neighborhood and the city of Boston with a particular focus on politics and development.
Her work and commentary have appeared in WBUR, GBH News, Harvard Public Health Magazine, and Politico’s Massachusetts Playbook. She has co-hosted MassINC’s Massachusetts politics and policy podcast The Horse Race since 2018, interviewing newsmakers, journalists, and elected officials across the state.
Appeals Court judges seem open to Maine limits on super PAC contributions
Federal housing bill includes modest help for Mass., but buzzy investor limitation unlikely to have much impact here
Political Notebook: House Speaker foretells Senate tax swerve
Layered over ADU law, Senate duplex bill would allow three units on most residential lots
In the face of a state housing shortage, could single-family zoning be on the chopping block?
The Mass. angle on US Supreme Court decisions
Faced with crippling housing crisis, Beacon Hill nibbles at the edges
US Supreme Court paves way for rollback of TPS protections for Haitians, Syrians
How did some of Massachusetts’s buzziest ballot campaigns get tripped up in court?
Mass. high court strikes rent control question from ballot
SJC blocks high-stakes income tax cut question from the November ballot
New report urges state to think small on housing crisis
Powerful real estate group says it’s open to rent control compromise
House wades in on data privacy: ‘Your data belongs to you.’
Rent control backers scrambling to find legislative road away from the ballot
Political Notebook: A notable absence in the ‘Nature for Massachusetts’ coalition
Driscoll offers support for YIMBY legislation
Local complexity stymies ADU push
One year in, backers of Massachusetts’s eviction sealing law say there is promise — and an awareness problem
Political Notebook: Data centers get their tax breaks, taxpayer group side-eyes ballot measures
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
