If you take a look at Mass Daily News right now, you’ll see a lead story about nearly $50,000 in campaign donations from Eversource executives to Gov. Maura Healey.
It’s hardly a match for Jordan Wolman’s CommonWealth Beacon story suggesting that Healey’s public criticism of Eversource is just an election-season ploy (he’s got the receipts), and it’s merely a rewrite of a Republican Party press release. But it’s not nothing, either. Some press releases deserve to be amplified.
Other stories on the Mass Daily News homepage feature crime, critical stories about undocumented immigrants and a commentary claiming that Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue bested Healey, a Democrat, during their debate moderated by WBZ-TV’s Jon Keller earlier this week.
So what is Mass Daily News? Boston Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan has learned that the man behind the anonymous site is named Simon Pacheco — a former Florida man who registered his company in Wyoming in order to flood the Massachusetts political mediascape with rightwing, AI-enhanced pink slime.
It’s quite a story, and kudos to Ryan for figuring out Pacheco’s role.