Take a deep dive into the stories that shape Massachusetts with CommonWealth In Depth.
In these thoroughly researched long-reads, CommonWealth Beacon peels back the layers behind the big headlines and spotlights unseen stories around the state by digging into complex legal challenges, thorny policy fights, and compelling personal narratives.
‘Re-wilding’ Massachusetts cranberry bogs
As Massachusetts’ famous cranberry industry consolidates and some of the cranberry bogs fade out of use, famers, governments, and conservationists are increasingly eager to start “re-wilding” them to natural rivers and wetlands.
At 90, Michael Dukakis still looks ahead
Michael Dukakis remade the Massachusetts Democratic Party, suffered a bitter loss after winning his party’s nomination for president, then spent three decades teaching college students and preaching the virtues of public service, something he has modeled for more than six decades.
Why did MassDOT hang T employees out to dry?
A Boston Globe story on employees working long-distance at the MBTA had 4 corrections. The employees who were incorrectly targeted and the reporter who lost her job were victims of a state bureaucracy that failed to stand up for its workers.
Brayton Point offshore wind prize in doubt
ONE OF THE BIGGEST prizes of the emerging offshore wind industry – an onshore subsea cable manufacturing facility providing jobs, tax revenue, and the beginnings of a US supply chain – is in danger of slipping away at Somerset’s Brayton Point because of a dispute over a zoning condition. Prysmian Group, based in Italy, is…
State Police escorts sometimes involve political favors
JUST OVER A YEAR AGO, on a busy Monday afternoon around 2 p.m., the State Police shut down the heavily congested southbound lanes of the Southeast Expressway in Boston starting near South Bay so they could escort a hearse carrying the remains of a Randolph police officer from the state medical examiner’s office to a…
A sea change on managed retreat?
AS WATERS RISE, coastal residents are increasingly facing a difficult choice: try to relocate in a difficult housing market and take losses on their homes, or get comfortable with a future where there may be multiple feet of water in their living rooms. “Eventually people are going to move, either of their own volition or…
Massachusetts cities and towns have spent millions restoring historic religious sites. They don’t know if it was constitutional.
FOR NEARLY two centuries, the Acton Congregational Church has stood serenely in the town’s main square, its pews offering a welcoming haven for spiritual renewal and quiet reflection. Starting in 2016, however, it became the focal point for a closely-watched court battle over the separation of church and state. On the church’s clapboard front, a…
A race to keep up – or to the bottom?
MARCH WAS “Problem Gambling Awareness Month” in Massachusetts, but for those in charge of the state lottery the gambling problem coming into the new year was that people weren’t doing enough of it. The lottery was seeing flat or declining sales in many of its games during the last half of 2022, which represented the…
A race to keep up – or to the bottom? Lottery bets big on $50 scratch ticket, online games.
MARCH WAS “Problem Gambling Awareness Month” in Massachusetts, but for those in charge of the state lottery the gambling problem coming into the new year was that people weren’t doing enough of it. The lottery was seeing flat or declining sales in many of its games during the last half of 2022, which represented the…
Could Boston face an ‘urban doom loop’?
AT FIRST, the emptying out of downtown Boston office buildings looked like a seismic, but temporary, reaction to a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic. Once we got a handle on the mysterious new virus ravaging the globe, the initial thinking went, things would more or less return to normal. But we are now coming to terms with a…
Reimagining a mutual aid society
WHEN SARA HOROWITZ got her first job as a labor lawyer at a firm in 1994, she writes, she assumed it “would come fully loaded. Benefits just came with a job after all, and I assumed mine would include health insurance, a retirement plan, and the protection of basic labor laws. I assumed that a…
Are exam schools really an academic promised land?
AFTER MONTHS OF debate amid heightened attention to racial justice issues, the Boston School Committee approved sweeping changes on Wednesday night to admission rules for the city’s three selective-entry 7-12 grade exam schools aimed at increasing diversity in their student populations. The school committee voted to revamp admission standards in a way that will have…