The Swellesley Report

More than you really want to know about Wellesley, Mass.

Wellesley-based TV reporter stabbed in Boston, recovering

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Wellesley’s Ted Wayman, a TV reporter for WCVB-TV Channel 5, was stabbed on Sunday night in the South End while doing his job.

According to a Boston Police report, “The victim stated when he asked the suspect to leave him alone, the suspect responded by taking out a pair of scissors and in a threatening manner, the suspect held the scissors above his head in a closed grip. The suspect then began stabbing the passenger’s side window of the victim’s van multiple times, causing scratches to the glass window. As the victim attempted to close the door to the van, the suspect stabbed him on the left forearm causing a severe laceration. The victim was eventually able to close the door, preventing additional harm.”

The alleged assailant has been apprehended.

Boston Police did not identify the victim but WCVB-TV told the Boston Globe that Wayman was taken to the hospital and will be fine.

Here’s wishing Wayman a quick recovery.

(H/T to Universal Hub)

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Wellesley to hold public hearing on Verizon cable contract

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wellesley town hall war memorialsThe Board of Selectmen will hold a virtual public hearing on Monday, June 29, 5pm, to discuss Wellesley’s contract with Verizon cable television.

The hearing is one of two that are required in order for Wellesley to renew its license with Verizon. The Town’s current Verizon license ends in November 2021.

The discussion will be streamed live on Wellesley Public Media and may be watched on television on Comcast channel 8 and Verizon channel 40.

Residents are invited to participate and give input on the Town’s cable TV needs and interests. To take part, please email [email protected] prior to the hearing. Participants will be assigned a number designating the order in which they’ll speak, and a phone number to call where they will be conferenced in to give comments.

Verizon cable TV records and information about the license renewal process are available from the Selectmen’s Office. As Town Hall remains closed to the public, please email [email protected] to request information.

A second public hearing on the Verizon license will be held in September 2020.

Additional tech news—MLP webinar on June 25th

Wellesley’s Municipal Light Plant is hosting a webinar on June 25 from 7-8:30pm to get the word out about plans to mount AT&T small cell antennas on more than 40 poles around town in an effort to boost wireless service. AT&T reps and radiation safety specialist Donald Haes, Jr., will be part of the program, and residents can submit questions in advance to have them addressed before the installation is set to begin this summer. More info here.

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Page Waterman, Wellesley
London Harness, Wellesley
Stretch Lab, Wellesley

No fooling: We’ve launched Natick Report

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Entering Natick, Bob and DebSure, there’s plenty in Wellesley to keep you and us busy. Still, we’ve been plotting and scheming for years to expand our publishing empire. Natick is the natural choice.

Why Natick? Because we bought our first house there, a small Cape near the other Roche Bros. Once we checked that box, we had babies and brought them to the Natick Cooperative Playgroup, where we all got properly socialized. Heck, we still have besties in town who we’d lay down in traffic for. So that’s why Natick. We may have lived there for only eleven years, but those were seriously formative years, people. What’s more, our current property spans both Wellesley and a wee bit of Natick, and most of our immediate neighbors live in Natick.

As we do with Swellesley, we’ll strive to make Natick Report  a central source of news and information about the town for residents, those who work here, and visitors. With that voice of ours to boot. So of course we’d launch it on April 1 in the midst of a health crisis.

There might even be room for some good old-fashioned Natick-Wellesley rivalry content, not to mention articles of interest to both towns. We’ll definitely be reaching out to our friends in Wellesley, Natick and wherever to help on this venture.

The Swellesley Report started out as a highfalutin hobby. An experiment in civic duty we took on in the spirit of exploring online community journalism, if you will. The hobby then turned into a beast, which we’ve wrestled into a revenue-producing career. Fine, maybe it’s actually online journalism and its 24/7 demands that have wrestled us into submission, but we’re not complaining. In fact, we’re gluttons for punishment.

Natick Report begins…

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Wellesley Media seeks board member

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Wellesley Media Corp., is looking to fill out its 5-member board of directors with someone who will support the non-profit’s mission of educating Wellesley citizens on civic, cultural, and other community matters.

Wellesley Public Media offers services via live streaming, on-demand video, and cable TV.

The next board member should have experience so they will be able to understand the equipment and infrastructure used by Wellesley
Public Media.

Submit background or resume to Peter Marx at [email protected].

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Thank you Swellesley Report supporters & on to Year Sweet 16

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We can’t thank all of you enough for your Swellesley support during 2020. As a small token of our appreciation, we’ve decided to keep our esteemed publication going into 2021. Here in the newsroom (also known as our kitchen table), we take things year by year.

As many of you know, The Swellesley Report’s co-creators and editors are Wellesley residents Bob and Deborah Brown. We launched Swellesley in December 2005 mainly out of a sense of civic duty and in the spirit of exploring the possibilities of online community journalism. What started out as a bit of fun turned into a small business as our site became more popular. As we increased the commitment level to our readers, our readers increased the commitment level to us, and our lives changed forever.

Entering Wellesley, Bob and Deb
Photo by Beth Shedd

 

Times change, the news keeps coming

It’s been a wild year for writing about Wellesley, from the public school system’s innovative viral testing program to protests against injustice to various efforts to squeeze some fun into our lives, such as via drive-in movies and graduation car parades (we even took our initial shot at parade banter). We even had an ice cream flavor named after our site courtesy of Truly’s.

Traffic on our site spiked as high as 10x the usual in March as COVID-19 emerged. Indeed, pandemic posts largely topped our list of most-read items for the year.

With well over a million page views per year, it’s clear that Wellesley (and beyond) is tuning into The Swellesley Report regularly.

site traffic march
Readership boomed when the State of Emergency was announced in March

Even as Swellesley got busier as the pandemic set in, we expanded our empire to include Natick with the launch of Natick Report on April 1. No, we didn’t come up with a name as clever as The Swellesley Report, but we’re approaching our news coverage the same way.

How you can help us: Contribute money, advertise & share news tips

When we’re talking above about thanking you for your support, we mean a few different things:

Contribute money

While we’re not a non-profit, we are a Small Business with a capital “S” in Small. Nearly three times as many of you (80+) sent contributions in 2020 as in 2019 to support our independent journalism venture, with a number of you signing on for monthly contributions. This helps to cover our web hosting and other software costs, not to mention compensates us for time spent covering the news (and watching endless town meetings online so that you don’t have to).

We have this question for you: Do you pay for a subscription to a news source? Publications like ours that put out daily content for free are increasingly turning to their readership and asking flat out: help us become a sustainable business.

In that spirit, we are asking you flat out right now: help The Swellesley Report become a sustainable business.

Share news tips

This includes not just the “Hey, my organization is doing a thing” announcements, but sharing documents from town or other organizations that don’t always divulge info directly to us, or from retailers that you patronize that are doing something new or unfortunately, closing shop. We thank high school and middle school students who contributed excellent articles to our mix. And our thanks also go to all of you who shared photos, the quirkier the better. I mean, we get around, but less so when the town and state are asking us to stick close to home. And as Bob likes to remind people, “I have a day job. I do Swellesley on the side…”

News tips: [email protected]

turkeys
Shared by a Swellesley tipster

Advertise

As you can see on our site we have dozens of advertisers. Some are with us all year long, some for shorter periods to promote one-off events. We are especially grateful to have so much advertiser support this year considering the challenges many of you faced, and hope we were able to help you stay in the public eye.

Here’s more on how to advertise on Swellesley.

As we head into 2021, we invite you to share your ideas for how we can do better on the news and business sides of things: [email protected]

Whether you come to us via www.theswellesleyreport.com, search engines like Google, or social media apps such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, keep in touch.

And remember to sign up for our free daily email. That way, you’ll never miss a post.

Once more thank you, and here’s to another great year of local news coverage.

Deborah & Bob

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Happy 15th birthday to us: The Year in Swellesley

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Nothing ever happens in Wellesley. Except it does.

We’ve enjoyed another full year of sharing your stories, breaking news and watching it go viral, and weaving in our personal adventures.

Wellesley Town Hall
Wellesley Town Hall

 

With the Swellesley Jrs. aging out of the Wellesley Public School system, Mrs. Swellesley turned her attention to The Swellesley Report as her full-time job. Our goal for 2020, our 16th year publishing, is to have Mr. Swellesley do the same.

Thank you to everyone who sent news tips and financial contributions to Swellesley in what has by far been our top year for readership and reader support. And huge thanks to all of our advertisers, who help to make Swellesley possible from a financial standpoint.

Swellesley highlights this year included:

Wellesley boardwalk
Wellesley Ecocampers make use of the vernal pool overlook.

 

lynne smith elton john
Lynne Smith: Wellesley’s Rocket Woman

 

wellesley high senior tailgate
WHS surprise tailgate

 

organ wellesley
Estey organ left at Wellesley RDF (photo courtesy of Hilary Prus)

 

Wood carving, Overbrook Dr., Wellesley

 

On a more personal note:

Wellesley Wednesdays, Beth Shedd
The Swellesleys made the cut for Beth Shedd’s Wellesley Wednesdays by Beth Shedd

 

We finished the year by ringing the Salvation Army bells in Linden Square to help raise funds for local initiatives. We saw dozens of people we knew during our shift, and thanked many we didn’t know, but they all reminded us of the magical stuff we have here.

elsa in wellesley square

support swellesley

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