Dan Rea

Dan Rea, a veteran Boston television journalist, is the Host of NightSide on WBZ NewsRadio 1030 every weeknight from 8:00pm to midnight.

In November of 2010, Dan was honored with the prestigious Yankee Quill Award by the Academy of New England Journalists and the New England Society of Newspaper Editors. This distinguished award is considered to be the highest individual honor awarded by fellow journalists in New England.

NightSide focuses on a wide variety of issues, political, economic and social. Rea believes that talk radio is the best way for people to communicate their opinions and ideas on what he calls “North America’s Virtual Back Porch”. Rea encourages challenging conversations and diverse ideas combined with respect and tolerance for the opinion of others. But don’t think for a moment that NightSide is anything but provocative, always interesting and at times, passionate and emotional.

Dan Rea is a native Bostonian, educated at the Boston Latin School, Boston State College and Boston University School of Law. Dan spent thirty-one years as an on-air television reporter at WBZ Radio’s sister television station, WBZ-TV, the CBS affiliate in Boston.

While working as a general assignment, investigative and political reporter at WBZ-TV, Rea won many awards, including two Regional Emmys and nine Regional Emmy Nominations. His reporting took Rea across America and to Europe several times to follow stories involving New Englanders. Rea has interviewed every American President since Gerald R. Ford.

Rea considers his most important work in television a fifteen year crusade that helped gain freedom for Joe Salvati, a Boston man wrongfully convicted for a 1965 murder of which Salvati was completely innocent. Rea exposed corruption within the Boston office of the F.B.I., whose agents conspired with a disgraced federal informant to wrongfully, intentionally and maliciously convict Salvati and three other innocent men. The men and their families were awarded over $ 101,000,000 by Federal District Court Judge Nancy Gertner on July 26, 2007, a day during which Rea concluded his career at WBZ-TV with a series of day-long on air reports.

Rea is the recipient of many distinguished awards including the First Annual Excellence in Journalism Award from the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Silver Shingle Award for Public Service from Boston University School of Law and the Silver Circle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the New England Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

In addition to Rea’s Juris Doctor from Boston University Law School in 1974, Rea recently received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from the University of Massachusetts Boston and from the Massachusetts School of Law. Rea has been an active member of the Massachusetts Bar since 1974 and is admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in the Federal District Court of Massachusetts and before the United States Supreme Court.

In May of 2001, Rea was honored by the My One Wish Foundation for his work with various charities including the New England Center for Children (childhood autism center) and has served on the boards of several charities during his public life including the Samaritans (a suicide prevention organization from 1979 to 1994), the Pike Institute on Law and Disability at Boston University School of Law and the Massachusetts Vision Coalition (formerly Prevent Blindness Massachusetts).

Rea has written op-ed articles for the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and Newsweek Magazine. He was the subject of a children’s book, “A Day in the Life of a Television news Reporter” published by Little Brown and appeared in the Oscar-nominated film, “Reversal of Fortune”, which chronicled the celebrated trial of Rhode Island socialite Claus Von Bulow.

Rea and his wife Jeanne, are the proud parents of a son, Daniel III, and a daughter Catherine Florence.