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About Us:

Welcome to Contrarian Boston

I became a reporter because I had a passion for getting to the heart of the matter, and, failing that, raising some good questions.

Three decades later, I’m still at it.

Launched in 2021, Contrarian Boston offers a different take on the news, one that does its best to cut through the mind-numbingly predictable partisanship that pervades life today, and has fun while it is at it.

Our stories have been cited by The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, CommonWealth Beacon, and Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation blog, among other publications. Today we have more than 10,000 subscribers, several hundred of them paid.

You’ll find a fair amount of original reporting here, from investigative pieces to shorter stories, as well as fact-based analysis and commentary on the events of the day.

Sometimes our take on a particular issue is as simple as a line or two highlighting a questionable focus or a missed story angle in the mainstream media.

We also cast a wide net, delving into a varied mix of regional, national and local stories and issues, yet with a perspective grounded in Greater Boston.

We are fortunate here in the Hub to still have two daily newspapers, a pair of public radio stations, and several weeklies and small dailies in the suburbs.

Yet even in the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s, the old MSM outfits had their blind spots - angles, stories, and even entire issues they either ignored or neglected because they just didn’t fit into their intellectual template or worldview.

It’s a problem that has only gotten worse as newspapers and other MSM outlets have imploded, slashing reporting and editing staffs.

At Contrarian Boston, we do our best to fill in the growing gaps in the news landscape, with our own reporting and by connecting you with the research and reporting of others.

We don’t hesitate to call out good reporting, either.

But above all, we call things as we see them.

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Fact-based news, commentary and original reporting with a contrarian edge about local, regional and national events.

People

A veteran journalist, Scott Van Voorhis founded Contrarian Boston in November, 2021. He has over three decades of reporting experience in New England, including as a staff writer for the Boston Herald and the Boston Business Journal.