Based in New Bedford, Ben staffs our South Coast Bureau desk. He covers anything that happens in Fall River, New Bedford, and the surrounding towns, as long as it's a good story. His assignments have taken him to jails, factories, city halls, fishing vessels, bakeries, environmental cleanup sites and the homes of hundreds of interview subjects. Ben joined the bureau in February 2021 after three years in Brockton reporting for The Enterprise. His freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Providence Journal. When he's not working, Ben can often be found near the beach hiking, surfing and collecting the strange things that wash ashore.
Drought conditions might be easy to overlook in New England’s cities, but many farmers are working hard to make ends meet this year in southeastern Massachusetts, a region that’s home to more than a thousand farms.
Our reporter Ben Berke spoke with Morgan Beard, a journalist from the local newspaper Dartmouth Week, about what he’s hearing from farmers on the South Coast this month. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Regulators in Massachusetts can now consider more than just electricity costs when contracting with offshore wind farms, allowing the state to prioritize job creation and other proposed benefits.
Only a handful of American colleges currently offer the safety certifications that many offshore wind developers require for construction projects.
Our South Coast Bureau Reporter Ben Berke is a frequent visitor of Hazelwood Park, where volunteers are seeking to revive a lost tradition of playing croquet and lawn bowling in New Bedford’s South End. He stopped by last Friday for the grand re-opening of the park’s bowling greens.
President Biden tested positive for COVID-19 Thursday morning, less than 24 hours after traveling to Massachusetts to give a speech on climate policy. Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the president is taking antiviral drug Paxlovid and experiencing “very mild symptoms.” The plan, she said, is for Biden to quarantine in […]
President Biden visited Massachusetts on Wednesday, where he spoke about next steps for climate policy, including plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avert a global environmental catastrophe. His visit comes less than a week after negotiations to pass a major climate spending package through Congress fell apart. The president promised an announcement “in the […]
Questions about whether investigators got to the bottom of the union’s corruption problems are still swirling around the department.
In Fall River, seven police officers began wearing body cameras this week as part of a pilot program that the department’s brass is hoping to expand. Chief Paul Gauvin said he wants the rest of Fall River’s 200-plus police officers wearing body cameras soon. The cameras, slightly bulkier than an iPhone, can be mounted on […]
This week the EPA began removing soil polluted with lead and PCBs from five homes in Dartmouth. Regulators suspect the neighborhood’s wetlands and low-lying areas were filled with contaminated material during the midcentury suburban boom.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill recently passed by Congress will provide $73 million that is expected to carry the project to completion.
