Tag: Shadow Campus

Globe’s Pulitzer-winning editorials target income inequality

Over the past few years The Boston Globe has been quietly nurturing some talented editorial writers. Last year, Dante Ramos — now an op-ed columnist — was a Pulitzer finalist for a series of editorials on revitalizing Boston’s night life. On Monday, Kathleen Kingsbury won a Pulitzer that is especially timely given rising concerns over income inequality: eight editorials on the harsh realities of restaurant work, particularly in the fast-food industry.

Like Ramos, Kingsbury has moved on — she’s now the editor of the Sunday Ideas section. Still, Kingsbury and Ramos have showed that there’s life in those unsigned voice-of-the-institution editorials, derided by some critics (including me on occasion) as obsolete.

The Globe came close in two other Pulitzer categories, including the prestigious public service award. Its “Shadow Campus” series on shamefully inadequate and dangerous housing for the city’s thousands of college students was a finalist, coming in behind the surprise winner of the 2015 awards: the smallish Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, which shone a light on the state’s high death rate from domestic abuse. The Globe last won the public service award in 2003, for its reporting on the sexual-abuse scandal within the Catholic Church.

In addition, the Globe’s Sarah Schweitzer was a finalist in the feature-writing category for her story on a scientist’s quest to save a rare North Atlantic right whale. I thought it was notable that the Pulitzer judges specifically cited the article’s “disciplined use of multimedia,” an acknowledgment that the full experience is available only online.

Finally, I can’t avoid noting that restaurant workers are not the only people facing harsh realities. Kevin Roderick of LA Observed reports that Rob Kuznia, who shared a Pulitzer on Monday for his work with the Daily Breeze of Torrance, California, had left the paper a while ago to take a job in public relations.

“I spoke with him this afternoon,” Roderick writes, “and he admitted to a twinge of regret at no longer being a journalist, but he said it was too difficult to make ends meet on his newspaper salary while renting in the LA area.”

Also online at WGBHNews.org.

The Globe’s detailed look at student housing abuses

Shadow Campus

As a Northeastern professor, I’m certainly aware that many of our students live in less-than-ideal conditions. But to the extent that I’d given it much thought, I had assumed the squalor was largely of the students’ making (see this, for instance), compounded by greedy landlords who pack too many residents into their buildings.

According to The Boston Globe’s just-completed series “Shadow Campus,” that may be true, but it’s just the beginning. From Sunday’s account of a fatal fire, to Monday’s story on hazards elsewhere in the city, to today’s profile of landlord-from-hell Anwar Faisal, the series, by the paper’s Spotlight Team, documents the dark side of Boston’s student-fueled economy.

The series was many months in the making, and (full disclosure) was reported in part by student reporters, including some from Northeastern, who are not identified in the story. Certainly the large universities in Greater Boston — particularly Boston University, Boston College and Northeastern — will be challenged to build more on-campus housing. Given the failure of the city’s overwhelmed inspectional services to do better, the story also removes a bit of a shine from former mayor Tom Menino’s legacy and puts Mayor Marty Walsh on the spot.

Online, “Shadow Campus” has all the multimedia bells and whistles we’ve come to expect with long pieces: a beautifully designed, easy-to-read layout; lots of photos and video clips; and official documents the Globe dug up in the course of its reporting.

Overall, a very fine effort.

More: Here’s a complete list of everyone who worked on the series. Student reporters are listed under “Correspondents,” though not everyone in that category is a student.