About

Hey! My name’s Eric. I’m a journalist.

I am the entertainment editor at Observer. I co-founded and co-edited the animation journalism site The Dot and Line. I’ve interviewed directors, producers, actors, writers, musicians, animators, and comedians; written longform analyses of movies and TV series; sat on or moderated a handful of panels, podcasts, and live interviews about animation, labor organizing, and social media. In 2020, I led a team of editors, writers, and animation experts at New York magazine’s Vulture to compile a history of cartoons. The final result was the 34,741-word opus, “The 100 Sequences That Shaped Animation,” a project celebrated by The New York Times, Cartoon Brew, and other outlets.

Previously, I’ve served as the managing editor of Hyperallergic; a cities editor at Thrillist in charge of features for 11 metropolitan areas, and as a social media and digital editor at Esquire. I have also worked for the teachers’ nonprofit DonorsChoose.org and co-founded and ran the defunct arts and culture site Outcryer.

I’m fond of the words of Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, after he’s just endured a grueling psychological crisis. His father asks him what he will do next, and Sisko replies: “The only thing I can do—stay here and finish the job I started.”

Get in touch at vilasboas [dot] eric [at] gmail [dot] com.

—If I like you, I sign things EVB

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