Forry Foundation President, Maureen Forry-Sorrell

The newly named Edward W. Forry and Mary Casey Forry Foundation for Community Journalism will build on the work of the Forry family and The Reporter newspapers — including BostonIrish.com —that have been an essential source of well-reported news and opinion in Boston for more than 40 years. The foundation will support young journalists in their training and education and provide an entryway into careers in media here in the city of Boston.

 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 Ed and Mary launched The Reporter from their Dorchester home in 1983. The foundation was re-named this year to honor Ed Forry, who is the founder of Boston Irish Honors and remains a critical part of The Reporter’s team in Dorchester and in the Boston Irish community. 

“The Ed and Mary Forry Foundation will be devoted to the idea that was really at the root of our parents when they conceived of The Reporter back in 1983: That the stories of our communities deserve to be better told and that the people who live here are best equipped to do that themselves,” said Maureen Forry-Sorrell, Ed and Mary’s daughter, the president of the foundation. 

“In some form or fashion, Ed Forry has been working in the local news business since he set up an amateur radio transmitter in his Dorchester basement at age 15 to tell his neighbors what he saw going on in his community,” said Bill Forry, the executive editor and co-publisher of The Reporter.

“Long before he and Mary started The Reporter and the Boston Irish project, he was writing columns and news stories in weekly newspapers in Dorchester, Mattapan, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, and South Boston. His unrelenting dedication to covering the neighborhoods of the city has created a path for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people to follow that journey, too.

“We would like to keep that going for years to come – and thisfoundation will be a perfect vehicle to make that possible.” 

Mary Casey Forry 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 reconstituted foundation, which now includes Ed’s name in its title, continues to support hospice care efforts, but will expand its scope into the journalism space. A portion of the funds raised by the non-profit entity will assist in paying for the costs of newsgathering and will also fund a scholarship in Ed and Mary’s name to support young Bostonians interested in a journalism career. 

The foundation partners with local universities and institutions to recruit and train aspiring journalists in city neighborhoods. 

“We have those ingredients already at The Reporter – and within the local news ecosystem,” said Linda Dorcena Forry, the co-publisher of the Dorchester Reporter and an officer of the foundation. 

The Forry’s Reporter brand is nationally recognized as a leader in community journalism and for training the next generation of reporters and editors. In October 2024, The Reporter was awarded an inaugural $100,000 grant from Press Forward and the Miami Foundation as part of its coveted “Closing Local Coverage Gaps” initiative.

 In 2025, The Reporter was chosen by Boston University’s Department of Journalism to be part of its groundbreaking “New England Newsrooms” project, which is training student journalists to support regional news organizations with essential news gathering capacity and to create new models of sustainability in the news industry. “We are known for producing high-calibre young journalists who go on to populate other newsrooms,” said Linda Dorcena Forry. 

“Our alumni network is one of our greatest assets – and we’ll call on them, too, to help us advance the work of training, and helping to fund, training and scholarships and internships.” 

Former Reporter journalists have gone on to work in newsrooms across the US, including institutions like Bloomberg News, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Axios, and the New York Times. Patrick McGroarty is one example. 

Pat, who has spent the last decade as a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, has just accepted a new position as Economy Editor for the New York Times. He started his career in journalism working at The Reporter with the Forrys and his Boston College mentor, Tom Mulvoy, an associate editor at the Reporter, in 2006. 

“The Dorchester Reporter made me a journalist,” McGroarty said. “I carried skills honed at The Reporter into work for The Associated Press in Germany and assignments at The Wall Street Journal across Europe, Africa and the US. Over the past several years, as an editor based in New York, I have realized how rare an opportunity I had at The Reporter to cover such varied stories under the watch of mentors who cared so deeply about the community they served. 

“With American media under threat and local journalism in retreat, any young journalist would be lucky to make their own start with a mandate as simple as knocking around for the best stories in Boston’s largest and most diverse neighborhood. I certainly was.”

  As Maureen Forry Sorrell says: “Local journalism has never been more important, or more endangered. The big media landscape is a bit of a mess. Algorithms are driving outrage, billionaires are buying megaphones, and truth too often gets drowned out by noise. But here’s the good news: News outlets like The Reporter still show up and can help lead the way.” 

Your support of the Forry Foundation today— and in the future— will help us carry on the mission that Ed Forry and Mary Casey Forry nurtured over the decades and that is thriving through The Reporter and Boston Irish to this day.