Northeastern professor and media commentator Dan Kennedy has mixed reactions to the new enterprise. “I do think journalists ought to do more to seek out real experts on subjects they’re writing about,” he said. But he’s not yet convinced about The Conversation’s viability here. “The media market here is very different. In the UK, most […]

Massachusetts employers have continued to add jobs at a steady pace, giving people who have given up on finding work the confidence to start looking again. The participation rate — the percentage of working age Bay State residents with a job or actively looking for work — rose 0.3 percent last month to 66.2 percent, […]

The surge in luxury market prices is another indicator of the income gap in Greater Boston. It comes as more Boston-area families stretch to make ends meet. The share of households spending more than a third of their income on housing — generally considered the threshold for affordability — has jumped to more than 38 […]

Jurors were not persuaded, and Hernandez will now spend the rest of his life in prison, barring a successful appeal before the state Supreme Judicial Court. The appeal process could take years, experts said. Hernandez’s appellate team will scour the trial transcript before filing their brief with the SJC, said Daniel S. Medwed, a Northeastern […]

The Justice Department recently analyzed eight years of shootings by Philadelphia police officers. Its report contained two sobering statistics: Fifteen percent of those shot were unarmed; and in half of these cases, an officer reportedly misidentified a “nonthreatening object (e.g., a cellphone) or movement (e.g., tugging at the waistband)” as a weapon. Many factors presumably […]

Judith Hall, distinguished professor at Northeastern University and an expert in nonverbal communication, told me that save for a few isolated young people who play video games all day, most children have enough interpersonal contact to learn to read emotions: “Especially when the interaction is social — emails, texting, reading between the lines of Facebook […]

Even if the government rejects the Richards’ plea, the letter might influence the prosecution’s strategy during the death penalty phase, said Daniel S. Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University. “It creates a profound moral question for the prosecution,” he said. “The prosecution does not represent the victims, but out of deference to the Richards’ […]

In two separate presentations last month, Northeastern University professor and noted regional economist Barry Bluestone addressed community and business leaders in both Rockport and Gloucester, outlining his Rockport findings and updating data for a Gloucester economic study. In both cases, he cited a number of strengths in both communities. There’s Rockport’s educated, albeit small, local […]

New mapping technology could predict road imperfections.

The Boston Globe is joining other news organizations, including The New York Times, in pursuing native advertising — content that consists of editorial-like material but is bought and paid for. And the executive who’ll be in charge of it is Andrew Gully, a former longtime Boston Herald staffer who rose to managing editor for news […]

A Northeastern University associate professor well-known nationally and in Massachusetts for her work with older Americans was chosen Thursday as the state’s new Secretary of Elder Affairs. Alice Bonner, who previously directed the nursing home division for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Obama administration, will start her new position June […]

Such soft skills, as they are also known, are usually developed through job experience, creating a Catch-22 for young would-be workers, said Alicia Sasser Modestino, an economist at Northeastern University who studies hiring practices. “The old adage goes, ‘You can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job,’ and that […]