WBJ Editor Brad Kane
Updated: April 26, 2021
Letter from the Editor
The legacy of Grant Welker
On May 3, WBJ readers will no longer enjoy the privilege of stories from News Editor Grant Welker. That benefit will belong to Boston Business Journal, as Grant returns to the city where he lived before Worcester.
As he departs WBJ, Grant leaves behind a legacy of hard-nosed investigative journalism, data-driven reporting, and the vital-but-all-too-rare trait of speaking truth to power. During a time in the Central Mass. journalism industry where nearly all media outlets are more concerned with appeasing government officials and business executives, as well as promoting their ideas and opinions, Grant offered undisputed facts and thoughts from unbiased experts, unafraid of how his stories often went against the grain, following only where the research took him.
In 2018, Grant published a six-part investigative series showing how Central Mass. is behind the state and national curves in having businesswomen in positions of power. The Boardroom Gap investigative series has now become an annual highlight in WBJ’s coverage. Later that year, after hearing countless officials and executives brag of a Worcester Renaissance, he dove deep into more than three dozen key metrics to see if all that talk had translated into any actual extra economic output. His “Worcester’s overhyped Renaissance” story showed Worcester was still behind its peers.
Grant’s coverage of the publicly funded Polar Park baseball stadium public project has yielded many uncomfortable truths, including the development will likely not pay for itself through tax collections, as city officials have claimed; and how delays in contract signings put the city at a negotiating disadvantage against the Worcester Red Sox baseball team and the developer of the surrounding project. The only reason anybody knows the $160-million Polar Park is the most expensive minor league stadium ever built is because Grant did the legwork of tracking down all the costs of every other minor league stadium. Heck, the only reason the $160-million price tag is so well known is because Grant thoroughly read the city’s public documents on the stadium.
A good journalist can have an outsized – if often unseen – influence on a community, providing previously unknown information and critical analysis. For four years, Grant Welker brought his A game to his job at WBJ, and Central Mass. is better off because of him.
– Brad Kane, editor
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