Labor unions may be taking a beating these days but they’re not going down without a fight and somebody is going to emerge bloodied. The latest battlefield is right here in Massachusetts as National Grid’s lockout of some 1,200 union workers is in its third week with no immediate end in sight. The utility giant […]
Jack Sullivan
Jack Sullivan is now retired. A veteran of the Boston newspaper scene for nearly three decades. Prior to joining CommonWealth, he was editorial page editor of The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, a part of the GateHouse Media chain. Prior to that he was news editor at another GateHouse paper, The Enterprise of Brockton, and also was city edition editor at the Ledger. Jack was an investigative and enterprise reporter and executive city editor at the Boston Herald and a reporter at The Boston Globe.
He has reported stories such as the federal investigation into the Teamsters, the workings of the Yawkey Trust and sale of the Red Sox, organized crime, the church sex abuse scandal and the September 11 terrorist attacks. He has covered the State House, state and local politics, K-16 education, courts, crime, and general assignment.
Jack received the New England Press Association award for investigative reporting for a series on unused properties owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, and shared the association's award for business for his reporting on the sale of the Boston Red Sox. As the Ledger editorial page editor, he won second place in 2007 for editorial writing from the Inland Press Association, the nation's oldest national journalism association of nearly 900 newspapers as members.
At CommonWealth, Jack and editor Bruce Mohl won first place for In-Depth Reporting from the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors for a look at special education funding in Massachusetts. The same organization also awarded first place to a unique collaboration between WFXT-TV (FOX25) and CommonWealth for a series of stories on the Boston Redevelopment Authority and city employees getting affordable housing units, written by Jack and Bruce.
Posted inUncategorized
Alan Dershowitz will not be quiet
Could someone on Martha’s Vineyard please buy Alan Dershowitz lunch? Or a drink? Or some Beluga caviar? The 80-year-old Harvard Law professor emeritus, who now makes his home on the island and has been summering there for a quarter century, has been bemoaning his apparent ostracism among the social set because of his willingness to […]
Posted inUncategorized
Globe meets with McGrory accuser
THE ATTORNEY FOR former Boston.com staffer Hilary Sargent said on Monday that his client sat down for five hours with an investigator hired by the Boston Globe and laid out her claims of inappropriate sexual conduct by Brian McGrory, the paper’s editor, and others. “Today, my client spent more than five hours sharing with the […]
Posted inEconomy
State’s first pot store to open in Leicester
THE STATE’S CANNABIS Control Commission on Monday awarded its first license for a retail recreational pot store to a medical marijuana facility in Leicester, where sales will probably start sometime in September. The board unanimously approved the provisional license for Cultivate Holdings to add retail pot to the medical marijuana the company sells at the […]
Posted inUncategorized
The marijuana blame game
July 1 has come and gone and no one legally bought marijuana in Massachusetts. Plenty of people bought illegal marijuana and legally smoked it, sort of a “don’t ask/don’t tell” situation. But the date viewed by many as a launch for retail recreational sales is now looking like the end of the summer, almost two years after voters […]
Posted inUncategorized
Je suis Capital Gazette
If you don’t have thick skin and a dark sense of humor, your ability to survive in the news business is greatly diminished. Apparently, we’ll have to add a bullet-proof vest to that survival list in order to do our job. The rampage Thursday at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, that killed five people – […]
Posted inPolitics
The message of 2018 elections
Hello, Mike Capuano and Richard Neal? We have a message for you. That message was delivered loud and clear and if they weren’t paying attention, they’ll learn it in a New York minute. The message was no seat is safe, regardless of money, seniority, or casting the right votes. Boston University graduate and political neophyte […]
Posted inEconomy
Sales tax boon – or not?
It’s going to cost some people a little more to make online purchases after the Supreme Court ruled in a case involving Massachusetts-based Wayfair that states can collect sales tax on purchases by residents no matter where the seller is located. For many states, that not only clears up confusion stemming from a 25-year-old decision that said […]
Posted inUncategorized
Massachusetts issues first marijuana license
THE CANNABIS CONTROL COMMISSION marked a historic milestone Thursday with the approval of the first license for recreational pot in the state – the first ever granted east of the Mississippi River, in fact – to a cultivation facility in Milford. “We’ll go back to the office and celebrate for about five minutes,” Chairman Steven […]
Posted inThe Back Story
Globe’s day to dump news
IT IS KNOWN by reporters as the “Friday news dump,” that time, often in the warm weather months, that officials release bad news late in the afternoon on the verge of a weekend to minimize attention. It has been the target of derision by many in the media. “Releasing bad, unflattering, or embarrassing news on […]