Emily Sweeney

Emily Sweeney, a Boston Globe staff reporter for the past 7 years, came to our Reinventing the News class today to talk about how she uses new media. She said she was one of few Boston Globe reporters to begin using video to accompany her stories online. On her website, she lists some of her most recent work. It's funny, because I actually remember reading this story when it was on Boston.com and thought it was really interesting. It is about schools that are offering more "hip" and "new" things for physical education in high school, instead of the normal basketball and tag. Another story that I really liked was this story about school lunches in several schools.

Another thing that's very interesting is that Emily is featured in a documentary called Stranger Than Fiction: The True Story of Whitey Bulger, Southie, and The Departed, that is included on the 2-disc dvd set of the Departed, talking about Whitey Bulger with several other Globe reporters. It's really interesting to see how Emily can take her print journalism career so much farther than other writers may have done.

In class, Emily talked about the types of work she has done at the Globe and how she's outlasted the numerous layoffs that have happened in the Globe recently. She also discussed how she doesn't use iMovie like our class does to edit her videos. She is also really involved with a number of groups, such as NEPA and the Society of Professional Journalists. I've recently been on edge about continuing my print journalism dreams (I'm leaning more towards sports PR, thanks to the red sox gig) so it was interesting to have her come in and see all that she's doing with print journalism and show that the door to print newspapers isn't closed yet. The website that she mentions that she runs for the Society of Professional Journalist also lists a number of jobs that seems to be updated daily for journalism gigs in the Northeast area and New York City, and also has links to jobs recently posted on craigslist.