Reston Patch journalist Karen Goff always knew she was going to be some sort of writer.
“I said ‘I was going to be a writer’ when I grew up, but I did not know what exactly I was going to write and was not involved in anything like the school paper or yearbook in high school,” Goff said. “Then I went to college and studied journalism and worked at the school paper, which I loved, and that set me on the course to the news business.”
At Ohio State, Goff was the sports editor for the school paper for one quarter. She then began to work on sports in the late 1980’s.
“At the time, not many women were working in that field,” Goff said.
Her first job was as a sports reporter at a weekly newspaper in Ohio and then on the sports desk of the Washington Times. She eventually moved onto the Metro desk at the Times, then covered crime in Florida and then moved back to The Washington Times, with stints on both the sports desk and the features desk for seventeen more years.
“The newspaper business is changing a lot, and in 2009 I left print journalism to work for Patch, which was starting up in the Virginia suburbs and all over the country,” Goff said. “Even though I had been a print journalist for a long time and covered a variety of subjects, working for Patch has taught me a lot about digital journalism, photography, videography and social media, things I think all journalists need to know how to do to keep up these days.”
“One of the things I like best is that no two days are the same,” Goff said.
Even though Patch is a 24/7 site, most of what is on the site is prepared the day before, so the content starts out fresh in the morning.
“I usually keep a list and a calendar of things going on in the community, things to check on,” said Goff.
Goff’s day starts with checking to see what happened overnight with emails, facebook, and press releases from the police department.
“It’s hard to plan the rest of the day, sometimes you plan for a quiet day and then it all of a sudden becomes a very busy day with breaking news,” Goff said.
All throughout school Goff knew she had to be a writer because that was really all that she felt good at. She was terrible at math and she loved the thrill of covering breaking news.
“A good reporter can find a good story anywhere, Goff said. “ I still like finding a good story, so I guess I was meant to be a reporter.”
Goff’s most exciting story was in her sports career.
“I covered some big sports events like the National championship football, NCAA basketball tournament, and the US Open Tennis,” Goff said. “It was also really memorable to cover the 2008 Democratic Convention.
So what does Goff think will happen to the future of journalism?
“I think there will always be a role for journalists, but newspapers just tell part of the story,” Goff said. “Things have moved online very quickly, so to work in the business, journalists are going to have to know how to do a lot of different things in multimedia to make themselves marketable.”
