By William Tauro

Please check out this recent article that came out this past week on February 10, 2023 in the Tuft’s Daily and check out Somerville City Councilor Matt McLaughlin’s quoted response (“We live in the Golden Age of corruption in local government because there’s no media,” McLaughlin said, quoting Producer David Simon.)” Where have you been Matt?

Looks like he’s maybe in denial, maybe he feels bad for not acting on it earlier or maybe he’s even part of the problem to state something like that? Who knows? Councilor McLaughlin even asked me several times to publish multiple ghost articles the he has written, but seemed to be scared and got cold feet when it came time to putting his name on any of them with fear of repercussion because his brother is a Somerville police officer, his step father a former Somerville Police Officer sargent and most of all fear of flip-flopping accusations from his own party when he kept voluntarily recusing himself about defunding the police or wherever a vote was required regarding the police department while of course protecting his own make believe artificial WOKE status. Also don’t be fooled by him peddling his bicycle around the city because his wife owns a car, the same as for our mayor Katjana Ballantyne’s husband owns a vehicle as well because it’s all for show. In other words they’re just hypocrites in my opinion and the WOkE crowd is foolishly falling for it! During many of my years of reporting these crimes, I’ve been in communication back-and-forth with Matt Mclaughlin as he was providing me with abundances of communications and information as well, but looks like he is playing invisible man now. I actually like Matt as a person, I just don’t agree with his politics.

But nevertheless all of a sudden now Councilor McLaughlin seems to be acting like the Town-crier squawking about political corruption where as I’ve been telling him all along and he’s been communicating with me back and forth all along for prior years with emails and phone calls, but he seems to have disappeared into the sunset. Why has he and his colleagues on the city council been sitting on their hands for so many years not doing anything about it? After reading this Tuft’s Daily article, please look at the links below to my Somerville News Weekly prior articles as I have been reporting and publishing these articles in regards to Somerville political criminal activities and corruption over the past years.

Why hasn’t anyone of our other Somerville City Councilors, including our current mayor ever brought to lite nor mentioned and/or is questioning the existing DPW Overtime Scandal, the 2020 DPW Raid and seizures of computers and other vital information, the DPW Missing Money Scandal, the Illegal Political Eminent Domain Land Grabbing Scandal, etc, etc, etc?

Why is the former Somerville DPW Motor Equipment Repairman Foreman still on the city’s payroll after law enforcement raided his Somerville DPW office and his home seizing his computers as well in 2020. Why is he still getting a weekly pay check from the city? Also see the job description on the city auditor. City of Somerville’s Auditor job as auditor is to oversee fraud, waste, abuse, and manage the city’s finances. Why is he turning a blind eye as well and why isn’t he being reprimanded where he failed his job as auditor miserably? It’s too bad the IG doesn’t see this, or does he… along with the city council and mayor.

It’s time for Somerville taxpayer’s to speak up and demand answers!

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Tuft’s Daily Article:

Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism raises $5,000 to keep the Somerville Wire running temporarily
PERI BAREST
February 10, 2023

The Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism raised $5,000 in three weeks to keep running the Somerville Wire, Editor Jason Pramas announced in a Feb. 2 editorial. The donations of 40 Somervillians allowed the Wire, an online, independent newspaper, to avoid a long-term spring hiatus.
The Wire will soon be housed under the Somerville Media Fund, instead of BINJ, to create a clearer, more streamlined home for Somerville-specific media, Pramas said. He hopes this transition to the Somerville Media Fund will ease future fundraising campaigns. Pramas serves as treasurer of the Somerville Media Fund.
The new funding allows the Wire to hire a quarter-time reporter for four months. However, the paper still needs another $10,000 to keep the reporter on for a full fiscal year and $50,000–$100,000 to make the Wire a more permanent part of the Somerville media scene. Pramas will volunteer as the Wire’s editor and bookkeeper to keep the paper afloat.
Somerville City Council President Matt McLaughlin, who has previously worked as a journalist for The Somerville Times and as a public affairs specialist for the U.S. army, said the Wire fills a vacuum in local journalism that has existed for a few years.
“We live in the Golden Age of corruption in local government because there’s no media,” McLaughlin said, quoting Producer David Simon.
Somerville City Councilor At-Large Jake Wilson said he is alarmed by the number of people who are unaware of local government’s activities.
“There’s such a knowledge gap I find even between people who are … trying to be plugged in to what’s going on in the city and those of us who are in the meetings,” Wilson said. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to have a thriving local government and democracy.”
He added that he has been concerned by recent city decisions that have not received news coverage.
“There have been some fairly big moments,” Wilson said. “Some of them got coverage, [and] some of them did not really get media coverage, and it was pretty shocking to me.”
In 2015, journalists Chris Faraone and John Loftus approached Pramas about joining their nonprofit investigative journalism incubator project. The three have been running the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism ever since, largely thanks to funding from the Reva and David Logan Foundation. BINJ acquired Dig Boston, one of the city’s two alternative newsweeklies, two years later.
In 2019, BINJ started the Somerville News Garden to try out its nonprofit model in a small, diverse city threatened by the loss of local media.
“Somerville, that is good. It’s diverse. It’s interesting,” Pramas said. “It’s under the same threats so many other communities in the U.S. are, but it’s not terminal yet.”
Pramas, Faraone and Loftus started the Somerville Wire in February 2021, as part of the Somerville News Garden, and the paper has been publishing four to five Somerville-specific pieces each week since. The Wire’s goal is to help the “community talk to itself,” BINJ explains on its website.
“We produced hundreds of pieces of journalism in that time,” Pramas said. “We got an audience of a couple thousand.”
Pramas said that BINJ currently operates using a “hybrid economic model,” in which the profits from a commercial paper — in this case, Dig Boston — help support the nonprofit paper, the Somerville Wire.
“The idea is that you kind of lean alternately on one side or another,” Pramas said. “[We] have built a replicable model that other cities could use.”
Despite short-term success with the Wire so far, Pramas is not optimistic about any of the economic options for news organizations and believes that news outlets must cooperate to save democracy.
“There are three economic models that you could possibly use to do a news organization right now: … commercial, nonprofit, and cooperative. I’ve done all three, singly and in tandem. None of them work,” he said. “We don’t want to compete with what’s left here. … We, as a nonprofit, produce journalism for Somerville … and any outlet in the city that’s not a major corporate outlet is free to use it.”
Pramas hopes to one day see a national endowment for journalism at the federal level that supports news organizations from regional boards. In the meantime, the Wire is focused on connecting with its new partners, hiring a reporter and fundraising the remaining money to keep that reporter on staff. The paper is hosting a donor assembly meeting with the Somerville Media Fund board of directors and its recent donors to discuss issue areas to focus reporting on and next steps for the paper.
Wilson hopes that Somerville residents will continue to stand up for local journalism.
“I’m really shocked that we as a community have not stood up. … I’m surprised we haven’t come together and figured out how to have a fully functioning local media,” he said. “There’s a decent amount of money at least in some corners of Somerville nowadays. … I’d like to see some of that money come together and get behind an initiative.”

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My Somerville/Medford News Weekly articles:

Crickets In Somerville DPW Investigation | The Somerville/Medford News Weekly

Crickets In Somerville DPW Investigation

Letter from the Editor: Somerville City Council Demanding Mayor Curtatone to Come Clean | The Somerville/Medford News Weekly

Letter from the Editor: Somerville City Council Demanding Mayor Curtatone to Come Clean

Somerville Residents Urged To Demand Answers On Somerville’s Mysterious Item 28 Regarding DPW Overtime Scandal Raid | The Somerville/Medford News Weekly

Somerville Residents Urged To Demand Answers On Somerville’s Mysterious Item 28 Regarding DPW Overtime Scandal Raid

Why Are People So Afraid to Speakup, Stop Sitting on Your Hands Somerville and Talk | The Somerville/Medford News Weekly

Why Are People So Afraid to Speakup, Stop Sitting on Your Hands Somerville and Talk

Political Charades Hazards Lurking On Mystic Ave and Beyond In Somerville | The Somerville/Medford News Weekly

Political Charades Hazards Lurking On Mystic Ave and Beyond In Somerville