Taking note of two Globe departures

Two departures from The Boston Globe to take note of: Teresa Hanafin, a longtime veteran of the newsroom, is retiring, and Melissa Taboada is moving to Texas in order to run a local news initiative for The Texas Tribune.

Hanafin ran the Globe’s local news operation as metro editor in the late ’90s and later became one of the paper’s digital pioneers at Boston.com and with some of the Globe’s newsletter initiatives. The email to the staff, provided to me by a trusted source, is from senior editorial director for newsletters Jacqué Palmer and deputy managing editor for audience Heather Ciras.

After more than 40 years, Teresa Hanafin is retiring from the Boston Globe. Somehow, she is still only 35 years old.

Teresa started her career at the Globe in the cafeteria, where she worked in high school and used to tell her co-workers, “Someday I’m going to be on the other side of this counter.”

While at UMass Amherst, she was a summer intern at the Globe in 1977, then was hired to stay on as a part-time reporter. She eventually went off to work at the Berkshire Eagle and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette before returning to the Globe in 1985 as its first Cape Cod Bureau chief (bureau of one).

That was just the first of many jobs to come: Metro reporter, Real Estate reporter, assistant Business editor, State House reporter, Deputy City Editor, City Editor, Metro Editor, and Assistant Managing Editor for computer-assisted reporting (aka data).

As city Editor and Metro Editor, Teresa oversaw projects that won several regional and national awards, including George Polk, Investigative Reporters and Editors, National Headliners, and more. She also introduced the first personal computers and the first cell phones into the newsroom, and urged reporters and editors to spend time using both to learn more about the burgeoning online world.

In 1999, she was lured over to Boston.com to head up its nascent editorial operation. She increased the news and sports staff, created subsections for every major sports team, and added new sections: Technology, A&E, Travel, and more. During her 7-year tenure, traffic to Boston.com soared more than 600 percent, and the site won many regional and national awards, including several Online Journalism Awards for coverage of major stories such as 9/11 and the Red Sox world championship in 2004.

As audience engagement and social media editor, her team created many of our social media accounts, including on Twitter and Instagram; introduced comments on articles; and set up niche sites for suburban towns, parenting, and amateur photography.

In 2013, she ran the Globe.com and Boston.com liveblog for the Boston Marathon bombing for five days and nights, and later shared in the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News with the rest of the newsroom.

In 2016, she created her Fast Forward newsletter, which soon became the Globe’s most popular curated newsletter, at one point having more than 300,000 subscribers. She oversaw the Rhode Island Bureau for 8 months in 2020 during the teeth of the Covid pandemic. In 2024, she became editor of the Globe’s Starting Point morning newsletter.

Teresa has a few firsts to her name: The first woman to work the overnight shift back when there was an Evening Globe and women were prohibited from working that shift (she raised a stink), the first woman to ride with a Boston fire engine/ladder company for a story in the days before women were allowed to become firefighters, and the Globe’s first female Metro editor.

While all that is impressive, when you talk to those she has worked with over the years, they are quick to mention what a kind colleague she is. Angela Nelson, formerly of BDC, told us: She was more than a boss, she became my “teacher, mentor, advocate, cheerleader, and friend. The way she cares about people should be a model for us all.” We are sure many of you agree.

Please join us in congratulating Teresa on an incredible career. We will gather in the newsroom on Oct 1 to send her off, more details to follow.

Jacqué and Heather

Taboada was in charge of the Globe’s Great Divide project, which covers racial and wealth disparities in public education. Her sendoff is from deputy metro editor Ben Olivo and deputy managing editor for local news Anica Butler.

As you may have heard by now, Melissa Taboada is leaving the Globe and moving back to Austin, where she’ll lead a new newsroom venture by the Texas Tribune that’ll focus on local news. It’ll be a homecoming for Melissa, a proud Texan and H-E-B enthusiast, who spent more than 20 years as a reporter and editor at the American-Statesman.

Her last day here is Tuesday, Sept. 23.

Since joining the Globe in May 2021, Melissa has led the Great Divide team, and played a pivotal role in making it one of the best education teams in the country. She’s done that by putting her reporters’ growth at the forefront, at the same time guiding them through consistent, top-notch daily and enterprise coverage of the inequalities in Boston area public schools.

There are many tangible examples of Melissa’s impact on our newsroom. You could point to the multiple national awards the Great Divide team has won with Melissa at the helm, most recently sharing a Globe Edward R. Murrow Award for overall excellence for coverage of Boston’s school desegregation and on the Massachusetts special education system. It’s also the little things that put smiles on our face like the way she decorates her team’s pod for whatever occasion calls for it.

But her departure is more than those things. Since joining the Globe last year, we’ve come to know Melissa as one of the most natural newsroom leaders. Throughout her career, Melissa has mentored many early career journalists, particularly reporters of color, including teaching budding journalists at the University of Texas. She continued that legacy when she got here four years ago and she’ll take it with her into the next adventure in her career.

Stay tuned for details on the goodbye cake and happy hour gatherings.

Please join us in wishing her well in the next chapter of her life.

Ben & Anica