Ben Berke

South Coast Bureau Reporter

Based in New Bedford, Ben staffs our South Coast Bureau desk. He covers anything that happens in Fall River, New Bedford, and the surrounding towns, as long as it’s a good story. His assignments have taken him to jails, factories, city halls, fishing vessels, bakeries, environmental cleanup sites and the homes of hundreds of interview subjects. Ben joined the bureau in February 2021 after three years in Brockton reporting for The Enterprise. His freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Providence Journal. When he’s not working, Ben can often be found near the beach hiking, surfing and collecting the strange things that wash ashore.

Recently published
From Martha’s Vineyard to New Bedford to Salem, Massachusetts towns that bet big on offshore wind now face economic and environmental uncertainty as the Trump administration halts new projects and permits
A power struggle in the city’s troubled police department has blocked an interim chief from serving permanently, and cost her predecessor a job
A ruling from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals this week cleared the way for President Trump to re-fire federal employees who had been reinstated to their jobs last month by a lower court
The ‘Hands Off’ protest was organized by a mix of local labor, environmental and political groups
‘His work was brilliant and I think, like so many artists, that was the most comfortable way he knew how to interface with the world’