Eric Bosco

Writer & Researcher

Southeastern MA

Educator, Writer, Researcher

Eric Bosco

Writer & Researcher

Southeastern MA

Educator, Writer, Researcher

Obamacare changed their lives. Now these Kentuckians worry they’ll lose coverage.
Editor’s note: This story is part of Crossing the Divide, a cross-country reporting road trip from The GroundTruth Project and WGBH. The team of five reporters is exploring issues that divide us and stories that unite us. Follow their trip across America at xthedivide.org. Lois Smith was paralyzed, but now she can walk again.
Lexington Herald-Leader
Income, education gaps come into focus at Springfield's High School of Commerce
Editor's note: This story was produced as part of The GroundTruth Project and WGBH’s “Crossing the Divide” initiative, a cross-country reporting journey that explores economic, social and political divisions across America. They show up every morning, funneling through the black, steel doors and past the metal detector and the security officer at the entrance of the High School of Commerce.
MassLive
Somali storytelling takes a new form in Minneapolis: hip-hop
A group of two dozen young men, many of Somali and East African descent, sit in a makeshift circle of chairs on the first floor of a community theater in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Some are in school, some have dropped out, but all have come to listen, tell and talk about stories — about being harassed by police, about basketball, about feeling abandoned by politicians both local and national.
MinnPost.com
Smarter Laws, Better Bureaucrats
With comprehensive coverage of government documents and more than 2,400 journals from inception on hundreds of subjects such as political science, criminal justice, and human rights, HeinOnline is an affordable option for colleges and universities. Documents have the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database.
Map of the Month: Redlining Louisville
Redlining, the denial of services or the refusal to grant loans or insurance to certain neighborhoods based on racial and socioeconomic discrimination, can be a hard issue to understand, let alone talk about. The map, “Redlining Louisville: The History of Race, Class, and Real Estate,” has been selected as the first winner of Harvard’s new Map of the Month contest, which recognizes best-in-class data visualizations created by all levels of government and nonprofits.
Battling Blight: Four Ways Cities Are Using Data to Address Vacant Properties
From using data to drive efficiency in code enforcement to crowdsourcing the mapping of properties, cities across the country are making significant strides in the battle against blight. (Data-Smart City Solutions) -- Whether the result of a destructive natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina or the consequence of the foreclosure and home loan crisis of the mid-2000s, cities across America have been burdened with blight, the presence of vacant and abandoned properties.
Government Technology
Using Data Analytics and Mapping to Understand and Solve the Opiate Crisis
Americans are dying at an unprecedented rate from opiate drug poisoning -- the national average stands at 78 fatal overdoses per day. Heroin and prescription painkillers are killing more people per year than car accidents, a signal that the epidemic has reached historic proportions. Forced to grapple with the ravaging effects of drug addiction and overdose in their communities, cities, counties, and states across the country are turning to data analytics and mapping to help alleviate the human toll and better direct critical resources to address the epidemic.
UMass police helped keep student’s addiction secret
Logan’s parents drove all morning from out of state to reach his off-campus apartment that sunny afternoon at the start of UMass Amherst Family Weekend last October. His father and stepmother arrived first, around lunchtime, hoping to surprise the UMass junior with a cheeseburger when he got out of class.
The Boston Globe
UMass Amherst to end use of student informants
The chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has decided to end the school’s controversial confidential informant program, concluding that it is “fundamentally inconsistent with our core values” after an informant used by the university police died of a heroin overdose. Chancellor Kumble R.
The Boston Globe
The desperate and the dead
Few have paid a higher price for the nation’s mental health crisis than the loved ones of severely mentally ill people. At least 17 parents with signs of mental illness allegedly killed their children from 2005 through 2015, while a similar number of children allegedly killed their parents. But the toll of violence reaches far beyond family.
Researchers from WHOI, Buzzards Bay Coalition track water changes
And gauging the impacts of climate change locally is the theme of the project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, that combines citizen scientists with the seasoned professionals at WHOI. The testing and evaluation of water quality and ocean acidification across the bay is one of three parts of WHOI's broader study.
The Standard-Times
Fight to keep New Bedford's water safe ongoing, but no testing in multifamily homes leaves big question mark
Lead in the water is a constant concern for Kenny DeMello and his wife, who have lived in their home on Bliss Street since 2008. They live close to Clarks Cove and know that the city has old pipes, so seeing bits of sand in the water happened sometimes — but lead is far more worrisome. “We never drink the water," DeMello said.
The Standard-Times

About

Eric Bosco

Eric Bosco is an educator and journalist that has appeared on national television and radio for his ground-breaking coverage in the Boston Globe of the controversial use of college students as confidential drug informants. He has also worked as a research assistant on the Boston Globe's Spotlight Team, as a staff writer at the New Bedford Standard-Times, and as a fellow on a national reporting project.

As a research assistant and writer at the Harvard Kennedy School, he worked on a project advancing data analytics in municipal government. He blogged about government innovation and co-wrote a law journal article about modernizing government accountability in the age of smart cities. He also holds a Master's degree in Public Policy (MPP) as well as a Master's in Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

As an educator, Eric blends his experience as a journalist and researcher to provide engaging, meaningful, and relevant instruction to students of diverse backgrounds.