Since before we even published our first feature, we set out to use BINJ as an incubator to produce and distribute longform reporting. While our team has also taken on other big challenges, from teaching to advocating for journalism, we are proud to have fulfilled our mission to pursue the kind of comprehensive stories, often investigative, that fewer outlets are able to publish in today’s troubled media climate.
As part of our retrospective celebration of BINJ entering its tenth year, we hit the archives for some of our most impactful, popular, and memorable articles. Recognizing how hundreds of them intersect topics, we picked nearly 250 of our favorites and parsed them into 13 categories: Education; Labor; Housing & Gentrification; Police & Surveillance; Prisons & Parole; Transit; Environment; Politics & Government Accountability; Immigrant Communities; Music, Arts & Sports; LGBTQIA+; Opioids & Other Drugs; Massachusetts History.
We are posting these compendiums by category weekly through the end of January 2025, and it’s not just for posterity. We hope that seeing the fruits of our labor in this light inspires you to support BINJ to do more of this work; the greatest hits in these roundups alone add up to two features a month over a decade, and they are in addition to hundreds of columns and shortform articles from projects like Somerville Wire and Manchester Divided.
Finally, you can also help by telling us which topics and investigations you think we should follow up on in the new year. Check out the list below, then find our quick engagement survey near the bottom of the post.
Education Reporting
Unaccommodating: A BLS Story (June 8, 2016) By Nate Boroyan
The Hub’s most elite high school has been under growing scrutiny for its apparent neglect to properly address a culture of racial intolerance. While federal investigators probe that issue, this story of a former Boston Latin School student with special needs raises additional points of concern about another minority population at BLS.
How Mass Became Ground-Zero For Corporate Ed Reform (July 5, 2016) By Chris Faraone
With a statewide referendum looming in November, Massachusetts voters will have to decide just how much school privatization they’re willing to bear.
UMASS Boston’s Last Remaining Painter (January 7, 2018) By Joe Ramsey
A ‘Save UMB’ profile
Pride, Prejudice, And The Patriarchy (June 28, 2018) By Max L. Chapnick
How a BU professor fought her sexist denial of tenure and won
Welcome Back! (September 3, 2018) By Dan Atkinson
Late buses, fiscal mismanagement, and administrative legal woes as BPS reopens
Unctuous Pilot (October 31, 2018) By Zack Huffman
Students, councilors turn up heat over broken payment promises by nonprofits
A Modern Metco (May 29, 2019) By Brendan McGuirk
For more than 50 years, Metco has stood as a hallmark effort to address racial disparities in education. But for the progressive civil rights program to keep pace with the national dialogue around race, inequality, and white supremacy, stakeholders say it’s time to reexamine and recommit to Massachusetts’ once-radical program.
Special Investigation: Inscrutable Schools (July 5, 2021) By Daniel Defraia
How bureaucratic dysfunction prevents a reckoning with physical student restraint in Boston Public Schools
BPS Merger Plan Met With Resistance (February 9, 2023) By Emily Piper-Vallillo
The merger of the Shaw school is part of the district’s effort to combine small schools that face declining enrollment.
Unlocking Higher Ed (March 31, 2023) By Jean Trounstine
College classes cost less than half of what Mass pays to incarcerate people. So why aren’t we educating more prisoners?
