Jenny Gold

About

I am an award-winning health and education reporter with 20 years of experience and a special knack for deeply-reported narrative storytelling. I currently work as the early childhood reporter at the LA Times, where I write about the education and health of California children from birth to age 5. My stories explore the issues plaguing the childcare industry, as it continues to reel from a swirl of disruptions since the pandemic. I also investigate the ways that the health system is failing our youngest residents and their families. I am a dogged reporter, a skilled interviewer and an engaging audio guest/host. I'm also a stickler for accuracy and journalistic ethics. Over my career, I have interviewed thousands of people, held the powerful to account, and untangled complex questions about science and business in a way the public can understand. I have read and interpreted hundreds of medical and education studies and understand how to elicit the clearest and most interesting responses from researchers. As an audio reporter and producer, I have recorded stories inside a juvenile detention center in Albuquerque, on a ride-along with "mental health cops" in San Antonio, beside the incubators of the tiniest preemies in a San Francisco NICU, and at the kitchen tables of countless patients nationwide. I won the 2021 audio SABEW for a documentary I reported for Reveal about a first-year medical resident training in the ICU during the peak of the pandemic in Fresno. Before joining the LA Times, I was a Senior Correspondent with Kaiser Health News, where I specialized in translating complex health care questions into powerful and accessible narratives for audio and print. My reporting ranged from enterprise features and deep investigations to quick-turnaround news. As part of KHN's original reporting team, I helped launch the nonprofit news service from its early startup days into an established, respected, and still-expanding health news powerhouse. Before KHN, I was a Kroc Fellow at NPR, a phenomenal program for young journalists in audio. And before that, I was a Broadcast Associate at the CBS Evening News -- a job I started the day before Katie Couric went on the air as the first female anchor of an evening news program. My first assignment was to go across the street to pick up her celebratory blue martini. I currently live in the beautiful Bay Area, where I spend my (occasional) free time hiking, listening to my favorite podcasts, writing children’s books, and goofing around with my very silly family.