Lights Out Mass

Todd Wallack, an investigative journalist with more than two decades of experience in the media, started out in a small Ohio newsroom, later rose to the famed Spotlight team at The Boston Globe , and then moved to WBUR. Wallack’s name is synonymous with public records reporting in Massachusetts. His work has led to numerous precedent-setting lawsuits against government agencies that tried to keep...

On November 22, 2021, Fall River police officer Chelsea Campellone shot and killed 30-year-old Anthony Harden in his bedroom. Since then, Harden’s brother, Eric Mack, has been fighting for access to the investigative records that could shed some light on what happened that night. For the eighth episode of Lights Out Mass, we talk with Mack about his lingering questions and suspicions about the sho...

The seventh episode of Lights Out Mass is just in time for Banned Books Week ! We talk about how libraries are awesome, Jeff’s new project to uncover all book challenges at public libraries and schools throughout Massachusetts, how bigots — including Rayla Campbell, the former Mass GOP candidate for secretary of the commonwealth — have been using concerns about protecting children from sexual abus...

Lights Out Mass is a podcast about government transparency — or the lack thereof — in Massachusetts. Hosted by Andrew Quemere of The Mass Dump and Jeff Raymond of MassTransparency . For the sixth episode, we speak with Nathan Story, the programmer and records aficionado behind State Reference — a huge, searchable collection of Massachusetts public records that will soon prove to be an indispensabl...

Lights Out Mass is a podcast about government transparency — or the lack thereof — in Massachusetts. Hosted by Andrew Quemere of The Mass Dump and Jeff Raymond of Mass Transparency . For the fifth episode of Lights Out Mass, we discuss the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission’s new statewide database of complaints against police officers , how the commission left ou...

Lights Out Mass is a podcast about government transparency — or the lack thereof — in Massachusetts. Hosted by Andrew Quemere of The Mass Dump and Jeff Raymond of Mass Transparency . For the fourth episode of Lights Out Mass, we speak with Luke O’Neil, the independent journalist behind the bleak, irreverent, and hilarious newsletter Welcome to Hell World . We discuss the death of DigBoston (and lo...

Lights Out Mass is a podcast about government transparency — or the lack thereof — in Massachusetts. Hosted by Andrew Quemere of The Mass Dump and Jeff Raymond of Mass Transparency . The third episode is all about Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and her approach to public records requests. Although the governor is exempt from the public records law, Healey said shortly before taking office tha...

Lights Out Mass is a podcast about government transparency — or the lack thereof — in Massachusetts. Hosted by Andrew Quemere of The Mass Dump and Jeff Raymond of Mass Transparency . In our second episode, we interview journalist Laura Kiesel about the importance of remote access to public meetings for people with disabilities and the difficulties she’s encountered when requesting accommodations f...

Welcome to Lights Out Mass — a new podcast about government transparency in Massachusetts hosted by Andrew Quemere of The Mass Dump and Jeff Raymond of Mass Transparency . In our first episode, we introduce ourselves, talk about how public records can be used to investigate police misconduct, and weigh in on whether Donald Trump’s criminal trials should be televised. If you enjoyed this podcast, p...