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
‘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’
For the first time in six decades, the South Coast has passenger rail service to Boston: South Coast Rail
Reinstated federal workers in the region say they feel little hope of returning to their old jobs
President Trump has already cut over 1,200 positions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and agency leaders have been told to cut another 1,100 positions, according to a former administrator
It’s one of America’s largest works of Brutalism, and parts of it are crumbling