Eric Francis

• Name — Eric Francis Coppolino • Born — 1964 • Birthplace — Brooklyn, New York • Known for — Planet Waves, Book of Blue • Education — SUNY Buffalo • Employer — Planet Waves, Inc., New York Daily News • Occupation — Journalist • Website — Planet Waves

Eric Francis was born in Brooklyn, New York to Joseph Coppolino, a professor of communications, and Camille Cacciatore, a language teacher. At John Dewey High School, he was editor in chief of Gadfly, the official social science journal. In 1984 Francis founded Generation, a weekly student magazine at the University at Buffalo.

Eric Francis' first journalism job was as a staff reporter for the Echoes-Sentinel in Warren Township, New Jersey. He was a reporter/editor at Whitaker Newsletters, Inc., assigned to Health Professions Report, where he covered the American Medical Association, the American Nurses' Association and other medical industry issues, at the height of the nursing shortage in the late 1980s. He then moved into investigative journalism, in 1989 founding New York State Student Leader, later the Student Leader News Service (SLNS), in New Paltz, New York. SLNS covered higher education for the State and City University systems in New York; it chronicled the chronic budget cuts and tuition increases of the time, and was the first dependable student news entity covering the State University Board of Trustees and the New York State Legislature. The New York Times described Francis as one of the few people not on the state payroll who understood the state budget. Beginning in the late 1990s, he also wrote a column for Chronogram magazine.

As editor of SLNS, he covered the SUNY New Paltz PCB disaster of December 29, 1991, in which a transformer accident contaminated several dormitories with PCBs and dioxin, one of few reporters to do so after the first month of what became a decade-plus cleanup that cost state taxpayers $50 million by 1997. His investigative articles on the issue have been published in Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, the Village Voice, Woodstock Times, the Las Vegas Sun, The St. Louis Journalism Review, Lies of Our Times, and other national and international publications. His persistent coverage led to his being banned from the New Paltz campus as an alleged public nuisance on May 5, 1993. Challenging the ban, he brought a federal lawsuit against the State of New York in the persons of college president Dr. Alice Chandler and associate vice president for student affairs Dr. L. David Eaton, on freedom of speech and equal protection grounds (1st and 14th amendments), represented by civil rights attorney Alan Sussman. In summer 1994, the case was settled out of court, he was paid $20,000 damages, and the ban was rescinded with an acknowledgement from the state that his civil rights "may have been violated".

Coppolino is the founder of Chiron Return, a nonprofit organization that publishes Planet Waves FM and is the official nonprofit affiliate of the Pacifica Radio Network. The stated mission of Chiron Return is “mentorship in journalism.” On March 3, 2020, 10 days before the national emergency was declared, Coppolino began a daily blog covering the COVID-19 crisis. The intent was to document news reports related to the COVID test and the provenance of viral source materials used in the polymerase chain reaction. His group maintained the blog until May 31, 2023 and in the process, created a comprehensive primary source chronology of the crisis dating back to 2006.