Boston Globe journalist Emily Sweeney says the Boston accent that has made her a viral hit online is rooted in something older: her Irish ancestry. She said her background helped shape the reporting instinct that brought her to the newsroom, and she recently received Irish citizenship.
Sweeney, who is from Dorchester, said the reaction to her videos grew in recent months as people fixated on the sound of her voice. But she said the answer to why it resonates is simple. “It’s in my blood,” she said.
That claim comes with family history she can trace. Sweeney said her father’s mother was born in Ireland in Fivemiletown, Co Tyrone, and that she filed for citizenship using her grandmother’s paperwork. She said she got the citizenship a few months ago and has only been to Ireland once, but the trip left a mark. “I got that just a few months ago. I've only been to Ireland once, but, my God, I thought, 'this is home'. It is hard to describe,” she said.
Her family ties still run deep. Sweeney said she has a ton of relatives in Ireland and described the visit as a reunion with cousins she was meeting for the first time, even if they already knew her father. “It was so cool going over there, and meeting all these cousins. I was meeting everybody for the first time, ut they knew my dad, it was really nice. It was like a family reunion,” she said.
Yet the part of her identity now spreading online is the one she grew up around in Dorchester, an Irish American stronghold just outside Boston. Sweeney said the neighborhood is full of Irish accents and a strong Irish undertone, adding, “You are outnumbered by the Irish. It is all Irish accents. You're the one talking funny,” which helps explain why her own Boston speech is getting attention far beyond the city.
She also said that Irish upbringing shaped the way she ended up in journalism. As a child, she made little newspapers, books, cartoons, comic books and a small radio show. She said she still has a recording of herself at age eight pretending to host a radio show on a big boom box with cassette tapes. “It is a podcast, from past me, with a really high voice. I was always into media, and I didn't realize it,” she said.
That path did not begin with journalism, though. Sweeney said she originally went to college to study a completely different field after school, a reminder that the voice people now recognize online was not always aimed at a newsroom career. What is clear now is that the accent clips are doing more than drawing laughs: they are sending new readers toward a reporter whose family story, she says, has been part of the job all along.
