Curt Nickisch serves as WBUR's Business & Technology Reporter. He covers compelling and interesting Massachusetts businesses, economic issues and other financial stories for WBUR listeners and online users.
To enhance his understanding and coverage of business, Curt is currently a M.B.A. candidate at Boston University. He previously earned an M.S. in Journalism from South Dakota State University and a B.A. from the University of Utah.
His start in radio journalism began during Fulbright study in Europe, where he reported for Germany's international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. Curt has won various journalism awards, including national Edward R. Murrow and Scripps Howard Radio Awards for his documentary on German POWs interned in America.
BOSTON — Casino gambling is back on Beacon Hill, as Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo says he will file legislation in the next few weeks to license two resort casinos and add slots at four race tracks around the state. A move to legalize casino gambling floundered in the State House two years ago. This time, it could be different.
BOSTON — New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch said two people are dead, and 108,000 homes and businesses in the Granite State were still without power as of Sunday morning. The number of people without power continues to fall in Massachusetts.
BOSTON — Almost 25,000 people in Massachusetts are still without power, mostly in the northeastern part of the state, after Thursday night’s windy storm. The storm also brought heavy rain, sent waves crashing over seawalls in coastal communities, tore roofs off buildings and threatened to breach a dam in Freetown.
BOSTON — Harry Markopolos, the man who tried futilely for 10 years to expose Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to the SEC, has written a book about his failed crusade. “No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller” is released March 2. In his first radio interview, in March 2009, Markopolos told WBUR he’s still coming to terms with the fact he’d always been right about Bernie, but it didn’t do any good.
BOSTON — Aided by a soon-to-expire tax credit, the median price of a single-family home in Massachusetts jumped in January, according to two separate tracking organizations.
BOSTON — According to a new review, the Massachusetts housing market may not be as susceptible to a flood of bank-owned homes this year as many experts previously feared.
BOSTON — Boston-based Fidelity Investments said its average 401(k) retirement account ended a tough economic year up 28 percent.
BOSTON — John Polio, the Braintree police chief when Amy Bishop shot her brother in 1986, now wonders whether the Bishop family got away with a story that protected their daughter from a murder charge.
TEWKSBURY, Mass. — When the housing market crashed, so did the job market for mortgage brokers. Over the last two years, Massachusetts has lost two-thirds of its registered mortgage brokers, the middlemen between lenders and home buyers. We met two people from the mortgage business who are now trying their hand at new ventures.
EAST FALMOUTH, Mass. — The decade-long fight over Cape Wind may be in its final round. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he’s prepared to decide soon: Yes or no to the nation’s first offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound. On the Cape and the islands, the issue is as divisive as ever. WBUR’s Curt Nickisch met two people on the southern coast of the Cape who have come down on opposite sides of the debate — both for environmental reasons.
Not holding his breath for a consensus. That’s how Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar put it Tuesday on a trip to Nantucket Sound and the site of a proposed wind farm that has divided Cape residents. Salazar said he came to get a better sense of the land issues at stake in case there’s no agreement by April, and he has to make the call.
BOSTON — A multistate lottery that’s expected to generate millions of dollars per year for Massachusetts makes its Bay State debut this weekend.
BOSTON — It’s been a tenants’ market lately in commercial office space in Greater Boston, but there are signs the end is in sight. While landlords are still subsidizing rents and paying for upgrades to offices to encourage companies to move in,
BOSTON — The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported Thursday that the unemployment rate was up from a revised rate of 8.7 percent in November, but still remains below the national average of 10 percent.
BOSTON — First, Ted Kennedy overshadowed the state’s Senate race. Now his brother is. The GOP’s Scott Brown is invoking John F.Kennedy’s 1960s tax cuts as the right way to stimulate the economy, not spending. But was JFK was really a trickle down economist?
BOSTON — Massachusetts business owners are waking up this New Year’s Day morning to a new corporate tax rate. Whether they’re celebrating or suffering may depend on the size of their companies.
BOSTON — Harvard University had to scramble in 2008 to raise $2.5 billion. A new report out Friday from Bloomberg News spells out the troubling reasons why Harvard had to raise money so fast. It turns out the university spent $1 billion just to get out of volatile investments it owned.
BOSTON — WGBH may be better known for its TV channels. But it has taken over a commercial classical music radio station, letting WGBH change its own programming to more directly compete with Boston’s long-dominant public radio news station: WBUR.
BOSTON — Bank of America has named one of its Boston-area managers, Brian Moynihan, to be the company’s new CEO.
Greater Boston’s economic success is leaving too many workers behind, according to a new report from city planners and the non-profit group The Boston Foundation.
