As Rep. Tip O’Neill Jr. famously said, “All politics is local.” So, who better than Boston’s most trusted local news outlet, GBH News, to cover the pivotal upcoming midterm election and its ripple effects across the Commonwealth? Aligned with our regional partners, Cape and Islands Radio and New England Public Media, our statewide news network has set out to comprehensively cover every dimension of the election — its record-tying nine ballot questions, the many races up and down the three page-long ballot, and more — throughout the state.
From newsletter primers and short-form explainer videos to in-depth radio and YouTube debates, GBH News is producing a wide array of content on multiple platforms, adopting new media formats, and reporting from unexpected places to meet Bay Staters of all ages and backgrounds where they are. That means covering the stories in an election cycle that often go untold: the pressures faced by election clerks and poll workers in an increasingly polarized society; how Massachusetts is easing the obstacles disabled people encounter when trying to exercise their right to vote; the nebulous funding behind the initiative to repeal recreational marijuana in Massachusetts; and more. Central to this effort, however, is a lock-step collaboration with our partner newsrooms in Falmouth and Springfield.
An extension of GBH’s Connecting the Commonwealth initiative, the groundwork for this integrated statewide election coverage was laid two years ago. GBH News worked with NEPM to co-host a Senate debate between Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her opponent John Deaton from NEPM’s studio in Springfield. Broadcast to listeners across the state on CAI 90.1 and GBH 89.7, as well as on digital platforms, the live event demonstrated the cohesion and efficiency that the stations were capable of.
Leveraging that experience for the 2026 election cycle, GBH News partnered with Boston 25 News to co-host and co-produce a Democratic primary debate between Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Seth Moulton, which also ran on CAI and NEPM. “It was a joint effort from the three public media stations as one big entity,” says GBH News Senior Politics Editor Azita Ghahramani. “CAI and NEPM provided questions that were of interest to their audience, and our moderators put them to the candidates.”
Ghahramani adds, “It has become natural for us to partner more and more with our colleagues at CAI and NEPM, incorporating each other into our planning for politics coverage — especially given the statewide nature of many of the issues on the ballot.”
Hannah Reale, GBH News Associate Digital Editor, who’s project-managing the stations’ election coverage, agrees. “I think about it as three heads being better than one,” she says. “And as a generally Boston-focused reporter, I have no interest in parachuting into Western Mass. for a story. [The reporters at NEPM and CAI] know their audiences far better than we do.”
Along with prioritizing local voices and drawing on the expertise from every corner of the state, this approach is “just more efficient,” adds Reale, allowing the newsrooms to combine forces and source wide-ranging perspectives on a given story — such as a gun club owner in Falmouth, or an independent candidate in Sheffield. Massachusetts, of course, has no shortage of outlets and journalists covering issues and races, but a lot of those stories have paywalls and few of those outlets are as trusted as public media to be nonpartisan.
It's been wonderful to team up with GBH and CAI to provide our listeners with comprehensive statewide coverage. This partnership makes it possible for our reporting team in Western Massachusetts to focus on local races while still offering in-depth coverage of statewide issues provided by our partner stations."Elizabeth Román, NEPM Executive Editor of News
The strategy developed by the newsrooms revolves around providing audiences with “a menu ... of different options so they can learn about the issues and invest in their democracy,” says Reale. “If you only have a minute to learn about a ballot question, here’s a one-minute video; if you’ve got five minutes to read about it, here’s a newsletter; and if you have 20 minutes to dive into a question or a race, here’s a radio debate.”
GBH welcomed reporters from CAI and NEPM into GBH Studios to film nine short-form videos, breaking down each ballot question, available on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Paired with animations from GBH’s Creative team, the videos boil down each issue as concisely as possible for viewers. “It’s a uniquely challenging year for ballot questions in Massachusetts,” says Reale. With nine questions, it’s “a lot to ask voters to be informed on.”
Short-form videos, notes Ghahramani, have the advantage of gaining traction to the point of ubiquity online. “For a lot of people, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram are where they get their news. It’s our responsibility to reach them there,” she says. “But we’re not limiting ourselves to that — in our series on Boston Public Radio, every ballot question was debated, as well as all the constitutional officer races throughout the state. That’s where our listeners will get a much more in-depth argument for and against either side of a question or race on the ballot.”
Alongside GBH News’ short-form explainers and longer form Boston Public Radio segments, GBH News’ Gal Tziperman-Lotan launched “Unbox Your Ballot,” a limited, five-part newsletter series. “This project brings together all of our network’s content, providing voters a one-stop shop for everything GBH News, CAI, and NEPM produce pertaining to each ballot question and election,” says Reale.
Another pillar of GBH News’ political coverage is our new podcast geared toward younger listeners, Not My Politics, hosted by Senior Radio Producer Zoe Mathews. The show, says Ghahramani, is a video podcast series featuring conversations with young people who feel disenfranchised by the political system in one way or another. “Some of them are working outside the system to bring about change or make their voices heard, others are trying to drive change from within the system.” The video podcast will continue keeping tabs on the political headwinds affecting millennials and Gen Zers each month in the wake of this November’s election.
On the day of the election, GBH News and our partners are making a concerted effort to foreground voters’ voices, Reale says. “You’ll always find us at the polls on Election Day, talking to voters — hearing what brought them out, what they most care about — and putting their voices on the air.” GBH News will also have a live blog on the day-of, as well as a broadcast from our All Things Considered team, updating listeners on the results for the ballot questions, and constitutional and federal offices, as they come in.
“When it comes to midterms coverage, we know Massachusetts is not the star of the national show,” says Reale. “A lot of attention is headed towards those contentious Senate races and gubernatorial races across the country, so we want to provide that information and update our audience as best we can through our national NPR coverage.”
“As public media,” says Ghahramani, “we have a duty and an obligation to serve the audience and inform the public. We want to help people exercise their right to vote.”
“We take it very seriously, providing just-the-facts journalism in the neighborly, approachable tone you hope to get from public media,” adds Reale. “It’s been thrilling to see it all come together. Working closely with our reporters across the state, I have so much admiration for their skill, expertise, and knowledge of the communities they serve. We look forward to collaborating with CAI and NEPM in the next election cycle — because everything eventually comes back to politics.”
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Explore GBH News’ comprehensive election coverage, watch our Video Voter Guide playlist on YouTube, and listen to GBH 89.7, CAI 90.1, and NEPM 88.5 for updates from across the Bay State.
