Laurence Collins, 79, of Norwell, Mass., died of cancer July 25 while in hospice care in his nephew’s home in Gloucester, Mass.
Collins was a reporter at The Boston Globe. He began there in 1965 and continued as a reporter for more than 42 years. He covered the Massachusetts statehouse.
While covering state government “his special focus was the state budget and state spending, arcana that most reporters sought to avoid. But Larry knew the budget so well that he was often visited by legislators seeking guidance,” Walter Robinson, the Globe’s editor at large and former statehouse bureau chief, said in the Globe’s obituary on Collins.
Robinson said Collins “figured out numerous ways to be a fly on the wall in pretty much every back room. And there was no one in the statehouse press corps but Larry who could match the pols when it came to backslapping.”
Before joining the Globe, Collins was employed at a suburban newspaper for a few years.
He leaves a daughter, Liz, and a nephew, Michael.
The obituaries were written, at least in part, from published reports by Bulletin correspondent Nimra Aziz, an undergraduate student in the Northeastern University School of Journalism.