The Abridged version:
- Aaron Leathley joins Abridged by PBS KVIE as its first Capitol Impact Reporter, with a mission to explain how major decisions at the Capitol impact residents of the region.
- Megan Vaz started this week as our Placer County Reporter, serving one of California’s fastest-growing counties.
- With the additions, PBS KVIE’s newsroom has grown to 40 journalists.
The Abridged by PBS KVIE newsroom continues to grow.
This week, Abridged welcomed two new journalists who will deepen our coverage of Placer County and the state Capitol. As the news organization approaches its first anniversary, both roles are pivotal to our mission to better serve our readers with public service journalism that connects you with the people, places and issues defining the Sacramento region.
With the additions, KVIE’s newsroom staff has grown to 40, including 24 full-time reporters, visual journalists and editors.
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Aaron Leathley joins Abridged as our first Capitol Impact Reporter. Leathley spent the past five years serving the Stockton community, first with The Stockton Record and later for Stocktonia News, where she reported on business, public safety and government accountability at City Hall.
At Abridged, her mission will be to translate what happens at the state Capitol into terms that matter to Sacramento-area residents.
“My mission is to be your trusted guide to decision-making at the California Capitol, and how it will impact you,” Leathley said. “Communities across the Sacramento region have long been intertwined with state government — but neither government nor media has always spoken directly to those communities about how state policy shapes their lives. My job, and my commitment, is to fill that gap.”
Born and raised in Castro Valley, Leathley discovered an interest in journalism while living in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan in her early 20s. She returned to the U.S. to earn a Master of Journalism degree at the University of California, Berkeley, where she found her passion for local news.
News for Placer County
Megan Vaz is our new reporter serving the residents of Placer County. Placer is among the fastest-growing counties in California, and it deserves consistent public service journalism that explains how decisions being made about housing, commuting, education and local government impact the people who call it home.
Vaz brings a career built on hyperlocal reporting to her new beat. She started covering local communities as a freshman on her college newspaper’s city desk and has since reported for The Sacramento Bee, The (Toledo) Blade and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, along with student publications at Yale University, where she earned a B.A. in History in 2025.
“I care about local news that represents the people at the heart of issues, whether I’m writing about city council debates over land use or social media trends sweeping across my community,” Vaz said.
