Even though it wasn’t an election year in Massachusetts, 2021 was an interesting time.
Boston has a new mayor. The coronavirus pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon. Charlie Baker is essentially a lame duck governor. Polyamory is here. And Joe Biden is in the White House again.
NewBostonPost covered plenty of news in 2021, and grew its readership as a result. That said, here is a look back at some of the most popular content from NewBostonPost in 2021.
The Boston City Council voted unanimously for an ordinance to enact paid leave in cases of pregnancy loss, including abortion, in September 2021. It provides up to 12 weeks of leave and applies to both women and men. At the time, no one covered the story.
On Independence Day, former state representative Geoff Diehl (R-Whitman) announced his candidacy for governor of Massachusetts – and the first news outlet to have a story on it wasn’t The Boston Globe or Politico. It was NewBostonPost – which had the information before the mainstream media.
As of now, Diehl is the presumptive frontrunner to earn the Republican nomination for governor, given his endorsement by former President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden isn’t the most popular president ever, and the many people who read NewBostonPost’s story about the Let’s Go Brandon stores popping up throughout the state (and neighboring states) are a testament to it.
NewBostonPost paid them a visit, saw what the stores were like, and spoke to the owner to see how he came up with the idea. And from the sound of it, his stores aren’t going away anytime soon.
If you know who Kari MacRae is, it could be because she’s on the Bourne School Committee or because she’s running for Massachusetts Senate in the Plymouth & Barnstable District, but it may also be because of the conservative viewpoints she expressed on Tik Tok that irked some people and earned her the support of others.
She said that she didn’t think that schools should teach Critical Race Theory and that they shouldn’t teach kids that they can change their genders. She said this after being elected to the Bourne School Committee in May. The video resurfaced in September which led to calls for her to resign from the Bourne School Committee – and now an attempted recall campaign against her.
It also got her fired from her teaching job at Hanover High – which NewBostonPost was the first news outlet to do a full-length story about.
We gave MacRae a chance to speak as well as the school district (school officials didn’t want to talk), included the video in question, and gave people a chance to draw their own conclusions on the matter.
Ever notice how similar mainstream media stories sound? NewBostonPost doesn’t. Among other things, we cover stories no one else will.
This year, our readers were interested in a story involving a talented boys’ soccer player playing on the girls’ soccer team at Carver High School. His school didn’t field a boys’ team this past fall and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has said that the state’s Equal Rights Amendment gives athletes a right to play a sport on the other sex’s team if their school doesn’t offer it for their own sex.
NewBostonPost spoke with the player after a game to see how felt about the situation – and people read it.
Remember when the federal government sent many of us $2,000 stimulus checks earlier this year?
We don’t, either.
Joe Biden, a president-elect at the time, used it as a campaign promise to help get Democrats elected to the U.S. Senate in Georgia in early January 2021. His offer: you elect these Democrats to my party the majority, and we’ll give you $2,000 stimulus checks. The Democrats then backtracked, supporting $1,400 checks because $600 plus $1,400 is $2,000.
Even though NewBostonPost’s focus is more state and local politics, the lie had to be documented. Whether or not you supported the American Rescue Plan, it was a letdown for many people who thought they had a $2,000 check coming their way. The article gained traction even outside of Massachusetts as people all over the political spectrum saw a problem with Biden’s actions.
The Catholic Church encourages people to get vaccinated against coronavirus. But what happens when the values instilled by your Catholic faith make you criticize the vaccine … in church?
The pastor of St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis found out, when his bishop ordered him to stop talking publicly about the vaccines.
Try finding that story in The Cape Cod Times. And unlike NewBostonPost’s big church story in 2020, we didn’t even have to break any (purported) laws to cover this one.
NewBostonPost has made scores of public records requests to keep people informed about what’s going on in their children’s schools.
One of the first major K-12 education stories NewBostonPost covered this year, however, came from a tip from a concerned citizen. It turned out that the Milton Public School system had a 90-question survey that asked children all about race and gender given to students as young as 12 years old. It turned out, many parents in the liberal Boston suburb didn’t like the questions their kids were being asked.
It also caught the attention of WBZ radio’s Nightside host Dan Rea, who had a NewBostonPost reporter on the show to discuss the topic.
New to NewBostonPost? Conservative media is hard to find in Massachusetts. But you’ve found it. Now dip your toe in the water for two bucks — $2 for two months. And join the real revolution.
