Last year, the Dorchester Reporter’s leadership team moved to organize a new non-profit initiative that we hope will help to strengthen and inform the future of community journalism and civic life here in Boston and beyond.
Now, we are excited to announce plans for a celebratory event on May 28, 2026 at Southline Boston on Morrissey Boulevard that will serve as the official launch of the Edward W. Forry and Mary Casey Forry Foundation for Community Journalism.
Named in honor of The Reporter co-founders, the Forry Foundation seeks to honor Ed’s and Mary’s legacy. At this fraught moment of national crisis, including the erosion of public trust in government and media, we need to marshal our resources and train our energies toward supporting the essential pillars of news and commentary that have been hallmarks of The Reporter’s work since 1983.
Critically, the foundation will seek to support young journalists in their training and education and provide an entryway into careers in media here in the city of Boston. Led by Maureen Forry-Sorrell, the foundation is particularly committed to creating a pipeline of talent from the neighborhoods of Boston, which have been the focus of the Forry family’s work since my parents launched The Reporter from their Dorchester home in 1983.
Mary passed away in 2004, and a charitable foundation was set up in her name at that time to support the work of hospice care in and around Boston. The revised foundation, which now includes our father’s name in its title, will continue to support those original efforts, but has expanded its scope into the journalism space.
A portion of the funds raised by this non-profit will support a new scholarship program to assist young Bostonians interested in a journalism career in their studies. The first of these scholarships is named for our longtime friend and colleague, Thomas F. Mulvoy, Jr., a Dorchester native who spent the bulk of his 60-year career in journalism working at the Boston Globe, including 15 years as managing editor for Page One and news operations before his retirement on Dec. 31, 2000.
Tom (above) is now 83 years old and an associate editor at The Reporter, which he joined shortly after leaving The Globe and while he was teaching at Boston College, and which he continues to serve as a key newsroom leader. Over his remarkable newsroom and classroom career, Tom has mentored three generations of young men and women at The Globe and at The Reporter, many of whom are now passing that legacy along to their own mentees as they lead newsrooms across the United States.
The inaugural winner of the Mulvoy Scholarship will be selected this spring and introduced at the ticketed May 28 event, which will also help to kick off the annual Dorchester Day celebrations. We have assembled an advisory committee that mainly includes journalists and media professionals who are devoted to this cause and will help us plan the event, choose the scholarship winner, and advise us as we bring the foundation’s mission to life.
Learn more about how to apply for the scholarship and the May 28 event at the foundation’s website, forryfoundation.org. We hope you will consider supporting it financially and spread the word about this new opportunity to young, aspiring journalists. Eligible students can apply here.
-Bill Forry and Linda Dorcena Forry
Co-Publishers
