Five Boston Globe reporters, as well as a team of photographers, videographers, and data visualization specialists, spent the year focused on the Bowdoin-Geneva section of Dorchester, a neighborhood often identified with the violence that has erupted there with disconcerting regularity over the decades, despite repeated city efforts to quell it. The Globe rented an apartment on Mt. Ida Road, where two of the reporters, Meghan E. Irons and Akilah Johnson, lived from May to September, learning the rhythms of the neighborhood and the people who live there. The resulting stories chronicle a neighborhood's efforts to survive its most turbulent season and begin to stop the cycle of mayhem. All of the events were either directly observed by the reporters or, where noted, recounted to the reporter by someone who directly observed it.
About the series
The Boston Globe spent a year observing the troubled Dorchester neighborhood of Bowdoin-Geneva.