The Abridged version:
- Abridged by PBS KVIE welcomes Jake Goodrick as its new local news editor.
- Goodrick previously reported on Yuba-Sutter for The Sacramento Bee as a UC Berkeley Local News Fellow. He was previously the editor of a newspaper in Gillette, Wyoming.
- His reporting at The Bee covered topics ranging from local government and accountability to environmental topics across the Sacramento Valley.
The team at Abridged by PBS KVIE is pleased to welcome Jake Goodrick to our leadership ranks.
He’s a thoughtful journalist with a desire to tell the stories no one else is covering. It’s work he’s familiar with, and he’s going to bring even more of it to the Sacramento region.
“There’s more news to report, and stories to tell, than there are journalists to report it,” he said. “That includes the Sacramento area. I want to help Abridged fill those gaps.”
Goodrick took the reins as local news editor last week and is working directly with reporters Savannah Kuchar (schools), Daniel Hennessy (Yolo County) and Felicia Alvarez (accountability). He’s also working with a handful of our regular contributor team.
Originally from Cleveland, he earned a graduate degree in journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He then took an investigative reporting fellowship, digging into fraud that follows natural disaster response.
From there, he made his way to the Gillette News Record in northeast Wyoming, covering healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic, local government and more. He became editor of the News Record in 2022, when he led reporters covering the town of roughly 30,000 people.
“With few exceptions, if we were not covering a story, no one was,” Goodrick shared.
Most recently a UC Berkeley Local News Fellow for The Sacramento Bee, Goodrick made his home in Yuba City, covering the area deemed a “news desert,” where there had been sparse and inconsistent coverage from traditional news outlets. There, he built and launched a weekly newsletter, Yuba-Sutter Weekly, sharing news and information to serve readers north of Sacramento. At times, his work took him to Sacramento and Yolo counties and included in-depth reporting on the fireworks disaster in Esparto last summer.
“An honest belief in the importance of local news led me to Sacramento and this role,” he said.
If you have news tips, feedback or want to share in our welcome, reach out to Goodrick at jgoodrick@kvie.org.
Savanna Smith is Director of Editorial Strategy at Abridged.