Liz Goodwin. Photo via Twitter.
In an unusual move by any daily newspaper in 2017, The Boston Globe is expanding its Washington bureau. The paper’s bureau chief and deputy chief, Chris Rowland and Matt Viser, sent out an announcement to the staff earlier today reporting that the addition will be Liz Goodwin of Yahoo News. Here is the email in full:
Friends,
Liz Goodwin of Yahoo News jumped to the head of the pack of candidates for a rare opening in our Washington Bureau and stayed there despite a fierce list of competitors and a rigorous search. Her natural writing talent, ambition to tell big stories, and combination of inside and outside Washington experience made her a perfect fit for our team. She’s deeply dedicated and prolific, and, in the universal judgment of those who have worked with her, a total gem of a colleague. We are pleased to welcome Liz to the bureau in the role of general assignment political reporter.
Liz has been a reporter at Yahoo for seven years, covering two presidential elections and criss-crossing the country to produce features on the criminal justice system and immigration. She delves into her subjects with compassion, wit, and a keen eye for detail. She moved to DC from New York in February to cover Congress. She learned to navigate the halls of the Capitol while bringing her narrative flair to GOP attempts to repeal Obamacare and other dramas of the Trump era.
Before joining Yahoo, she worked as business reporter for the Tico Times in Costa Rica, and then as an assistant editor at the Daily Beast.
Liz grew up in Galveston, Texas, the youngest of four kids, and played soccer and volleyball at Ball High School. She went to Harvard for college where she studied History and Literature and covered student government for the Crimson.
News and storytelling are embedded in her DNA. Her grandparents were both journalists in Oklahoma who also raised cattle. Liz’s grandfather Paul McClung was a reporter and editor at the Lawton Constitution for years (and was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame) and her grandmother Geraldine wrote true crime stories from Texas and Oklahoma under the intentionally androgynous name Gerry McClung. Growing up, Liz (under the watchful eye of an anti-social pack of blue heeler cattle dogs) sometimes tagged along with her gramps as he tended to 150 head of Herefords on the family spread.
Liz’s arrival boosts the bureau’s roster to six people. She will help us deliver more of the original, penetrating, and richly reported news from Washington that demanding subscribers (and future subscribers) are gobbling up on BostonGlobe.com and A1 of the Boston Globe. Please welcome Liz to the Globe and wish her congratulations. She starts Jan. 8.
Chris and Matt