Emily Sweeney (journalist)
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- Author
- journalist
Emily Sweeney | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1975 or 1976 (age 50–51) Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 2003–present |
| Employer | The Boston Globe |
Emily Sweeney is an American journalist and crime reporter from Massachusetts who works as a columnist for The Boston Globe.
Sweeney grew up in Dorchester, the daughter of Jeannie and Robert J. Sweeney.[1][2][3] She graduated from Boston Latin School, where she played ice hockey on the boys varsity team and lettered in softball, soccer and hockey.[4] She then went on to Northeastern University, where she played four seasons on the women’s ice hockey team which won the 1997 ECAC hockey championship.[1][5] She graduated from Northeastern with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1998.[2]
Career
Sweeney has been a staff writer at the Boston Globe since 2003.[6] She covers local news. Her weekly column, Blotter Tales, appears in the Metro section every Sunday. She also writes a newsletter for The Boston Globe called Cold Case Files.[7] Her areas of expertise include local history, including crime and technology.[8]
Sweeney's expertise has led to her appearance on many TV and radio programs including Court TV, the Travel Channel, Science Channel, Beat the Press, Bloomberg Radio, and NESN.[6][9] She was a guest expert in Bloody Boston, a documentary series about organized crime in Boston, and she appears in three episodes of the Netflix series How To Become a Mob Boss.[6]
She is also the author of three books included a curated series of crime photographs for Arcadia Publishing called Boston Organized Crime and a book about the history of Boston-area mobsters called Gangland Boston.[10][11] Gangland Boston includes a section about the life of Whitey Bulger, a crime boss in the part of Boston where Sweeney grew up.[12] Her biography of John "Dropkick" Murphy, Dropkick Murphy: A Legendary Life, was published in 2023. Murphy is the namesake of the band Dropkick Murphys.[13]
Sweeney produces multimedia content for The Boston Globe.[14] In 2025 she created an interactive feature for The Boston Globe called "When Travel was Treacherous for Black People: The Green Book’s Legacy in New England", documenting over 300 Green Book locations in New England.[15] Sweeney does reporting on the newspaper's Instagram account where she often receives kudos for her local accent.[16] In April 2026 her reporting on a local burglary went viral on TikTok and Instagram.[17][18]