Since 1970, the Boston Globe Spotlight Team has been digging into stories that have prompted significant changes. To honor the investigative units’s milestone anniversary, Spotlight Team members, past and present, and others selected the top 15 Spotlight investigations of all time. To find out more about their picks, click on the links below and read about each original investigation and the lasting impact it had.
1971: Spotlight on Somerville
1978: The danger of radiation at the Portsmouth shipyard
1979: What’s wrong with the T?
1985: Police flock to quick, easy MA program
1988 + 1998: “The Bulger mystique” and “Whitey and the FBI: Crossing the line”
1990: Half-day justice
1996: Cruising on a broken down system
2002: Abuse in the Catholic Church
2006: Debtors’ Hell
2010: Patronage in the Probation Department
2014: Shadow Campus
2015: Clash in the name of care
2016: The desperate and the dead
2017: Boston. Racism. Image. Reality.
2018: Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.
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