democracy Archives

Editorial: Public Grantmaking Can Help Mass Indy News Outlets Survive

BINJ would like to work with fellow journalists and allied organizations to convince our state legislature to give it a shot

JASON PRAMAS July 24, 2025

Time For ‘No Billionaires’ Rallies

The nationwide “No Kings” actions were a nice start—but we need to shut down the oligarchy we have, not the monarchy we don’t if we expect to make the US a democracy

JASON PRAMAS June 19, 2025

Democracy activists protest the arrest of Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk by ICE at a protest in Somerville's Nathan Tufts Park, March 26, 2025. Photo by Gabriel Martins. Copyright 2025 Gabriel Martins.

Challenging Fear And Trepidation, Democracy Activists Rally In Somerville Following Student ICE Arrest

“Justice is something that people ignore until it happens in the neighborhood. … No one thought this would happen in a school in Massachusetts.”

GABRIEL MARTINS March 27, 2025

Large crowd outside of Skinner and Eddy employment office. The shipyard workers struck two weeks before the Seattle General Strike on Feb. 6, 1919.

General Strikes Are Now Mainstream In Massachusetts

Big ups for Rep. McGovern and Jon Keller discussing what was once undiscussable in Bay State media, but a few historical corrections are in order

JASON PRAMAS March 20, 2025

African American and white Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party supporters demonstrating outside the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey; some hold signs with portraits of slain civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.

The Minimum Program: A Strategy For Political Mobilization

We can rebuild the Mass. (and US) left by fighting for democracy, human rights, environmental restoration, peace, and bread-and-butter economic guarantees for working people

JASON PRAMAS March 6, 2025

Editor’s Note: Stay Calm And Think

Before the Massachusetts left can take action on the Trump administration’s concerning agenda, getting accurate information is critical

JASON PRAMAS February 6, 2025

Editorial: What Journalism Is Not

Fox News “embedding” with ICE agents in Boston was an affront to our nation’s core democratic values

JASON PRAMAS January 23, 2025

"Pie" by Eric Ferdinand is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE: MAJOR FUNDERS NEED TO GIVE EQUALLY TO ALL NONPROFIT NEWS OUTLETS

Because the current practice of “every outlet for itself” is absolutely failing to rebuild local news in the US The original mandate of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism was to produce longform investigative reporting and syndicate it to independent community news outlets around Massachusetts that cannot afford to produce

JASON PRAMAS July 29, 2022

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

VIDEO: JOURNALISTS DISCUSS PROBLEMS REPORTING RECENT DAVIS SQUARE DEATH

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

MARC LEVY AND JASON PRAMAS May 13, 2022

DigBoston box among the boxes of defunct newspapers in Union Square, Somerville. Photo by Jason Pramas. Copyright 2022 Jason Pramas.

EDITORIAL: NOW EVEN LESS NEWS IN SOMERVILLE

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

JASON PRAMAS April 19, 2022