Lights Out Mass

Pulling Back the Curtain on Government Secrecy (with Todd Wallack)

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 information — like the names of police officers arrested for drunk driving — from the public. For the ninth episode of Lights Out Mass, we nerd out with Wallack about his never-ending quest to reveal stories that officials would prefer to keep hidden, the confusing Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) law that has allowed police and prosecutors to conceal information about police misconduct and data about the legal system, why striking the right balance between privacy and transparency often means disclosure, and the link between the Spotlight team and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscibe for future episodes! You can find us on Substack [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/podcast], Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lights-out-mass/id1701645602], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/4MuSKULi4o79LGzWGd6O2v], and YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9nWWrUpb1cdLWebPi_Q0k27JGxHyxzqf]. You can find links discussed in this podcast here: https://andrewqmr.substack.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain] Our theme music is “Sun Bleach” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z_3YYmyRj0] by Lifeformed. Music available here: https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall [https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall] Sunlight is the best disinfectant! Get full access to The Mass Dump at andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

One Brother’s Fight for the Future of Police Transparency (with Eric Mack)

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 shooting, his lawsuit to force the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office to release more records, the important ramifications the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s interpretation of a 2020 police reform law will have for transparency of police shootings and misconduct in the state, the DA’s strained arguments for its secrecy, and why it’s OK to hate (some) lawyers. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscibe for future episodes! You can find us on Substack [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/podcast], Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lights-out-mass/id1701645602], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/4MuSKULi4o79LGzWGd6O2v], and YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9nWWrUpb1cdLWebPi_Q0k27JGxHyxzqf]. You can find links discussed in this podcast here: eric-macks-fight-for-police-transparency Our theme music is “Sun Bleach” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z_3YYmyRj0] by Lifeformed. Music available here: https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall [https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall] Sunlight is the best disinfectant! Get full access to The Mass Dump at andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Book Challenges in Massachusetts

The seventh episode of Lights Out Mass is just in time for Banned Books Week [https://bannedbooksweek.org/]! 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 abuse as cover for their bigotry, and proposed legislation that would ban book bans. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscibe for future episodes! You can find us on Substack [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/podcast], Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lights-out-mass/id1701645602], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/4MuSKULi4o79LGzWGd6O2v], and YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9nWWrUpb1cdLWebPi_Q0k27JGxHyxzqf]. You can find links discussed in this podcast here: https://andrewqmr.substack.com/p/banned-books-week [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/p/banned-books-week] Our theme music is “Sun Bleach” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z_3YYmyRj0] by Lifeformed. Music available here: https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall [https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall] Sunlight is the best disinfectant! Get full access to The Mass Dump at andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

100,000 Documents and Counting (with Nathan Story)

Lights Out Mass [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/podcast] is a podcast about government transparency — or the lack thereof — in Massachusetts. Hosted by Andrew Quemere of The Mass Dump [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/] and Jeff Raymond of MassTransparency [https://www.masstransparency.org/]. For the sixth episode, we speak with Nathan Story, the programmer and records aficionado behind State Reference [https://www.statereference.com/] — a huge, searchable collection of Massachusetts public records that will soon prove to be an indispensable resource for journalists and researchers. We discuss Nathan’s old project, Woke Windows [https://www.wokewindows.org/], and how it led him to conceive State Reference, the importance of machine-readable text and other seemingly stodgy technical details, how Nathan used web scraping to amass his huge collection of documents, why journalists should show their work, why it’s so goddamn annoying when cities and towns don’t post their email addresses online — and how Andrew is very envious that Jeff and Nathan are playing Baldur’s Gate 3. Stick around at the end for a bonus discussion of MassCourts.org [https://www.masscourts.org/eservices/home.page], the infamously infuriating website for state trial-court records. (Sorry about the issue with Nathan’s audio quality. We fixed it a few minutes into the podcast, so please don’t let it scare you off!) If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscibe for future episodes! You can find us on Substack [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/podcast], Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lights-out-mass/id1701645602], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/4MuSKULi4o79LGzWGd6O2v], and YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9nWWrUpb1cdLWebPi_Q0k27JGxHyxzqf]. You can find links discussed in this podcast here: https://andrewqmr.substack.com/p/100k-documents-and-counting [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/p/100k-documents-and-counting] Our theme music is “Sun Bleach” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z_3YYmyRj0] by Lifeformed. Music available here: https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall [https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall] Sunlight is the best disinfectant! Get full access to The Mass Dump at andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Incredible Shrinking Police Complaint Database

Lights Out Mass [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/podcast] is a podcast about government transparency — or the lack thereof — in Massachusetts. Hosted by Andrew Quemere of The Mass Dump [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/] and Jeff Raymond of Mass Transparency [https://www.masstransparency.org/]. 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 [https://www.bostonherald.com/2023/08/22/thousands-of-massachusetts-police-disciplinary-records-released-by-regulators/], how the commission left out most of the data, and cohost Jeff Raymond’s tireless efforts [https://docs.google.com/document/d/187IlSZZfMyeUjIYyDv_i9Q7StlPd61s60s8GI_EjfTk/edit] to release the full data using the state public records law. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscibe for future episodes! You can find us on Substack [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/podcast], Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lights-out-mass/id1701645602], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/4MuSKULi4o79LGzWGd6O2v], and YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9nWWrUpb1cdLWebPi_Q0k27JGxHyxzqf]. You can find links discussed in this podcast here: https://andrewqmr.substack.com/p/the-incredible-shrinking-post-database [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/p/the-incredible-shrinking-post-database] Our theme music is “Sun Bleach” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z_3YYmyRj0] by Lifeformed. Music available here: https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall [https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall] Sunlight is the best disinfectant! Get full access to The Mass Dump at andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe [https://andrewqmr.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]