About me
Welcome to www.LesleyGoldberg.com! Thanks for coming to check out the site. Now that I have your attention, here’s a little about my professional side. Since this is the “about” page, anyway.
I always knew I wanted to be a journalist. Ever since the summer of 1986, when my grandparents first turned me on to Vin Scully and Los Angeles Dodgers broadcasts, I initially wanted to be the first female voice of the Dodgers. Later, in high school, after a terrifying attempt at the morning broadcasts, I realized that there was a reason why I always did well in English: Print Journalism was my calling. (And in my genes, my mom has a degree in English from UCLA.)
I took Journalism 100 my first semester at California State University, Northridge, and went right to J110: News Reporting as a freshman. I was hooked. Then, after scoring an “A” in Cynthia Rawitch’s killer J330: Editing class, she helped inspire a career as a copy editor when she recommended me to join the staff of CSUN’s Daily Sundial, one of less than 100 daily college newspapers in the country.
I spent four years on staff at the Sundial, rising from copy editor to senior copy editor, wire editor, managing editor and editor in chief. During my tenure there, I designed countless front pages, edited all the news stories, wrote thousands of headlines, cutlines, etc., and contributed the occasional story.
After graduation, I paid my dues editing obituaries – like every good recent J-grad – as a copy editor/calendar editor at the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. After three weeks, I moved on to a full-time copy editing position with Poole Publications, working on three outdoors-related magazines.
After rush-hour traffic on the 405 and a two-hour commute each way got the best of me, I transitioned to the news copy desk at the Los Angeles Daily News. A news junkie was born.
After working nights – and a second job at Beverly Hills Baseball Card Shop for three years, I put my love of all things pop culture to use and moved to The Hollywood Reporter. As part of the news copy desk, I got to edit movie, TV, concert and theater reviews, breaking entertainment news, castings and financial news as it related to the entertainment industry, later resuming writing and covering assorted industry events around town for the paper and THR.com.
That’s when my freelance bug struck. A friend at the Los Angeles Times assigned me a story and that was all it took to motivate me to put pen to paper again. I began freelancing for the L.A. Times and Frontiers IN L.A. Magazine and the Regent/Here Media-owned SheWired.com (publishers of the Advocate), later branching out to AfterEllen.com, the No. 1 site for lesbians, and fulfilling my longtime dream of contributing to the nation's No. 1 LGBT publication, the Advocate.
I’m currently working on the features copy desk at The Hollywood Reporter, and covering special events including the Academy Awards, Emmys, Golden Globes, movie and TV premieres plus other panels around town on top of my full-time work on the features desk in addition to and balancing a 40-hour work week with freelance assignments in my free time. I also am available for print public relations, marketing and ghost writing assignments for all platforms.
If you have a freelance project that could use a good writer or copy editor – or both in one – drop me an email, I’m always looking for assignments and would love to talk shop.
Thanks for visiting,
Lesley