How Emily Sweeney became the Boston Globe's breakout star

I knew Emily Sweeney was going to be a star the moment I saw her video about a Boston-area home invasion in March. And it seems like everyone else did too: the video racked up more than 1.2M views and got nearly 100,000 likes on TikTok in just a few hours. The whole world was introduced to this hyper-local story — and Emily’s knack for telling crime stories with a bravado and uniqueness that can be compared to other legendary on-air reporters like Dateline NBC’s Keith Morrison. 

The people wanted more screen time with Emily and the Boston Globe delivered: shortly after that video took off, she was promoted to be the newsroom’s social video journalist. Besides the crime beat, she now gets to cover local stories of all kinds, including the World Cup games, an uptick in ticks, and the new dirty sodas from Boston’s unofficial-official coffee shop of choice, Dunkin. She does it all while wearing an impeccable track suit (she aims to wear a different one in each video) and with a distinguishable Dorchester accent. 

Emily and the Boston Globe’s success is a blueprint for how newsrooms can get people to care about the news. It just takes the right person and the right format to get everyone to pay attention. In Emily’s case, that attention is international: fans from as far as Australia have reached out saying how they’re now dialed into what’s going on in Boston. Myself included.

Emily talked to me about how the new job is going and, in Maxed Out tradition, shares her media diet. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Take me back to the 24 hours after your home invasion video dropped. Were you watching the numbers in real time? What was that like?

It was a crazy story to begin with. The story was about a mansion getting robbed by masked intruders. I knew it would get a lot of hits, and I wasn't surprised when they tapped me on the shoulder to do a video. But I had zero idea that it would ever go viral like it did. I think it was that night, I was looking at the views — 700,000, 800,000 — the numbers were just ticking, and I was like, all right, this doesn't seem normal. And then seeing the comments and everything — so many people commenting about my accent and what I was wearing. My editors were like, do you want to do another video? And I was like, oh my god, yes, absolutely. I'll read headlines, I'll do whatever. And that's what we started doing, and it's just kind of built from there.

And the comments spread way beyond Boston, you've been getting messages from people all over the world.

Yeah, it's definitely been international. I've gotten messages from people from Ireland, Guam, Australia, all different states across the country. There's a lot of regular people who are commenting now and following Boston news. It’s just really exciting to see people interested in news coming from a legacy media organization. And getting stopped in the street as much as I do now, so many people yelling out "the Globe" — who would have thunk? If you had told me even five months ago that this was happening, I'd be like, what?

I think you’ve got a great blueprint for how other legacy newsrooms should think about growing their audience. I know you were at the Globe for a while before this video blew up. What were you covering then?

ES: Before, my focus was print. I covered a lot of breaking news. I still write the Globe's Cold Case Files series, which is about unsolved murders. I have a weekly column called Blotter Tales, that's all about funny police log incidents and animal rescues and stuff. But now instead of just covering breaking news in print, the focus is all video. I'm out and about doing man on the street interviews, which I love, and doing a lot more feature stories. We did one where a meteorite came down and shook some homes, and it fell into Cape Cod Bay. So we got sent out and were on a boat trying to magnet fish — which we would have hit in the lottery if we actually got something. But I was out there with the Globe's meteorologist, and it's a story I would not have been assigned a few months ago.

What's a story you're dying to cover that you haven’t yet? 

Two things I really, really want to cover: unsolved murders — we just finished doing our first cold case video in this role and we're going to make that a regular series — and women's sports. In the past they've been overlooked. The Globe now has a reporter who's assigned to cover women's sports, and I'm not looking to take over her beat or anything like that, but I just want to add to it. We have a hockey team, a rugby team — there's a lot of great things going on, and I'm hoping to get more attention on them.

What was the transition from print to video like?

Honestly, seamless. I've been into video for a long time — I was like the first reporter to make videos to go along with my stories, and this was like 20 years ago. My focus was always print, and we've also built up an amazing, Emmy award-winning video department here at the Globe. But I always had my own social media channels and I'd post videos whenever I could. Having the chance to do it professionally and on a larger scale is just amazing. It's kind of like I'm pinching myself every day. Is this really happening?

So after posting videos all these years, when that home invasion video blew up, did you feel a sense of validation? Or was it more, wow, that really took off which is nice, I’ll enjoy this moment for now and move on. 

I honestly thought, okay, it's a one and done. I've seen this before, I'm on the internet all the time. And I also felt bad for the victims, because all this attention was going towards me. I didn't expect it to continue. But when the Globe asked if I could do a couple more videos, I was like, oh my god, yeah. I started labeling them — day two of my new broadcasting job at the Globe, I don't know how long it's gonna last. But then it went to day three, day four, day five, day six. After a while I stopped numbering them. Every single day, looking back until my job became official, I thought each day was going to be my last.

Well, congratulations on all the success! I probably know more about Boston news than I ever have in my life. When you’re off the clock, what’s your media diet like? Podcasts, apps, newsletters — what’s on your radar right now and how much phone screen time are you racking up these days?

ES: There were a couple days it was like 14 hours. But most days it's probably between eight and 10 — and then it really drops on the weekend. A little check.

The Boston Urban Archive, which is amazing. It was started by Ebony Gill — I don't know her personally, but I have such respect for just the curation of all these old photos, newspaper articles, and videos of different neighborhoods in Boston, mostly people of color, and a lot of things that are overlooked by mainstream media. 

And then Art But Make It Sports — I looked up the guy before this interview, his name is L.J. Rader, and he's an art enthusiast and also a sports guy. He takes scenes from current games and matches them up to a piece of art. He had a recent golf tournament shot that he compared to a Winslow Homer painting and they look exactly alike. I love that. 

A newsletter I really love is Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio. Full disclosure, she did a Q&A [with me], I think it was maybe a month or two ago, I'm not sure, but her newsletter is really good. A lot of great social media tips.

I also watch a lot of wilderness survival skills on TikTok — how to build shelters. That's kind of calming to put me to sleep. And then there's Matthew Dickey, he calls himself the streetscape curator — he goes into the history of buildings around Boston and the architecture. And Dart Adams — he's more than a creator, he's like a local historian and writer who talks about parts of Boston history that often get overlooked.

Editor’s note: Emily also shared a list of her favorite podcasts after the fact. In Emily’s words: