Photo from Cole Rosengren’s series on recycling workers by Derek Kouyoumjian
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. On the subject of labor in particular, BINJ Executive Director and writer Jason Pramas has weighed in via his Apparent Horizon column on several occasions.
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.
Labor Reporting
Ice Cold Democracy (June 21, 2017) By Haley Hamilton
Can a progressive new brewery help power the local labor movement?
Blood Suckers (November 28, 2017) By Eoin Higgins
Call center workers battle abusive customers, managers, bedbugs
Macro Aggressons (December 20, 2017) By Eoin Higgins
Trump flags, right-wing memes line walls at Boston company, workers be damned
Grand Scheme (June 26, 2018) By Jason Pramas
Mass legislature helps, harms workers in “deal” with labor and business lobbies
Sorting It Out (April 12, 2019) By Cole Rosengren
Will Boston set a new regional precedent and finally pay recycling workers a living wage?
Revisiting Recycling (November 10, 2021) By Cole Rosengren
It took decades for workers doing this dangerous job to get a living wage. But are their problems finally sorted out?
After The Strike (October 3, 2022) By Josh Halpern
How Did Comm Ave Starbucks Workers Make Out After 2 Months Of Striking? We Asked Them …
Paying To Play (September 29, 2022) By Dan Atkinson
How Rideshare and Delivery Companies Raised $43 Million and Bought Influence In Mass
