James Goodman, longtime D&C reporter, dies at age 73
James Goodman, a longtime Democrat and Chronicle reporter known for his passion for society's underdogs, his Columbo-like questioning in interviews, and his resolute and reliable accuracy, died Saturday at the age of 73.
Unfailingly polite and rarely prone to temper, Mr. Goodman still did not suffer fools gladly. In one telephone interview with a public official whom he found to be vague and obfuscating, Mr. Goodman said, "Have you heard of the word 'disingenuous'? I’ll wait while you look it up.”
Many came to respect Mr. Goodman for getting even the seriously minute details correct, even in the most arcane stories. And his concern for those who were the subjects of his stories — oftentimes people forgotten by the public and by his media brethren — found that he would be unrelenting in his pursuit of justice.
Sometimes slightly disheveled, with his dress shirt largely untucked, Mr. Goodman could, by appearance and quiet manner, fool some into thinking he could be duped as a reporter. Those who made that mistake were quick to learn the error of their ways.
"When I say my father would have been dead, were it not for Jim Goodman, I'm absolutely serious," said Pittsford resident Ellen Smith.
The Veterans Affairs' records of Harry Giuduce's military service were lost in a VA facility fire, and the VA refused him health benefits, even though the family had photos of him during his service.
He grew direly ill over a decade, and the medical costs threatened to bankrupt the family. State and federal senators of both political stripes tried to get the benefits, but failed. They gave up. Mr. Goodman, who did a story on the recalcitrant VA, did not.
Because of Mr. Goodman's reporting, the benefits were granted. Smith said Mr. Goodman's persistence was evident in the interviews with the family. "I can just imagine him (in calls to the VA) saying, 'OK, you don't have an answer today. I'll call back tomorrow.'"
Check and double-check
Richard Schauseil, who served as director of the county's social services agency between 1992 and 2002, saw the same concern from Mr. Goodman in his reporting on the region's poor and the government services meant to help them.
"He cared about the population that he was writing about, whether it was immigrants or whether it was social service clients," said Schauseil, who often faced a polite barrage of questions from Mr. Goodman during interviews.
Schauseil was one of the many who began to liken Mr. Goodman to the television detective Columbo, who methodically solved mysteries with what could appear to be a plodding approach to questioning and investigations.
Schauseil recalled his first interview with Mr. Goodman, in which they navigated the labyrinthine nature of social service mandates. The interview lasted an hour, and then, within the next hour, Mr. Goodman was calling with more questions and to double-check some answers. That was not the end, of course; he would call more times before the story appeared.
"I'd just swear at him sometimes when I got off the phone," Schauseil said. "Then two days later the story would come out and he would get it. Everything was perfect."
In the Democrat and Chronicle newsroom, Mr. Goodman's push for total accuracy was well known. He would call editors at all hours of the evening to make a tweak in a story.
Mr. Goodman's former colleague, Erica Bryant, recalled Mr. Goodman once telling an editor: “I double-checked the name of the monkey. The spelling is correct.”
A steady hand
Mr. Goodman, who died of heart failure, worked 34 years at the Gannett Rochester Newspapers, through 2017. Most of the time he was a Democrat and Chronicle reporter, though he once worked as an editorial writer for the now-defunct Times Union.
In numerous social media postings after news spread about his death, former colleagues spoke of his kindness and his willingness to lend them a helping hand, even in the frenetic chaos that can epitomize newsroom activity.
Bryant was one of many who, after Mr. Goodman's death, reflected on how he had been an immensely kind and valuable mentor at the Democrat and Chronicle. She now is an associate director of writing for the Vera Institute of Justice — "a position I never would have gotten without the influence and mentorship of Jim."
His son, Sam Goodman, said he espoused the same traits and lessons at home.
"He taught me what matters the most — trying to be kind to people, to find a meaningful career and not empty pursuits of materialism," Sam Goodman said.
Sam Goodman now lives in Costa Rica, where he helped create a nongovernmental organization working to find solutions for climate change. At first, he said, he was unsure if the venture could survive, but his father and mother, Caroline, were constant cheerleaders. Mr. Goodman even helped with some writings needed for the project.
"He was providing a steady hand behind the scenes and was extremely supportive of everything," Sam Goodman said. "... He always believed in me even when I didn't believe in myself."
Endless and extreme research
Ellen Rosen, a former Democrat and Chronicle editor and reporter and retired communications director at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said Mr. Goodman's incessant curiosity was central to his journalistic prowess. Mr. Goodman's last beat at the Democrat and Chronicle was the higher education community, and Rosen often worked with him when she was at RIT.
"He jumped at the chance to cover new scientific developments (the blackhole research immediately comes to mind) and would push the researcher to explain a discovery in great detail," Rosen said in an email. "He read all the background we supplied or he could find, poring over national databases on higher education, and creating his own databases on the region's colleges and universities."
Steve Orr, a retired Democrat and Chronicle reporter, wrote in a Facebook posting about Mr. Goodman: "He came by such excellence in his work not just by battering sources with his questions but by endless and extreme research. Jim seemed to make it a point to learn ten times more than he needed to write his stories."
"If an editor assigned him a short blurb on the Lilac Festival, you would see him reading a book on the history of lilac propagation," Bryant said of Mr. Goodman, who was known to take frequent walks in his Brighton neighborhood, reading a book as he strolled.
In his Facebook posting, Orr recalled one series of Mr. Goodman's inimitable telephone interviews: "I sat near Jim for years and overheard many of these exchanges, the most memorable of which was his sequences of calls to a University of Rochester physics professor whose work on an aspect of the origin of the universe had made him a candidate for a Nobel Prize.
"I remember laughing aloud as Jim called back the professor to obtain explanations of the Standard Model, 'God particles,' and the creation of mass." Orr recollected that Mr. Goodman asked the professor, "So, I know this goes beyond the scope of the article, but exactly what caused the Big Bang?"
'Digital Jim'
In the newsroom Mr. Goodman's difficulty with new technology was legendary. He was given the nickname "Digital Jim" and would later sign emails to newsroom colleagues and friends as D.J.
"He was proud of the nickname 'Digital Jim,' which he earned by never giving up, even on the day when his computer display somehow ended up turned sideways," Bryant said. "I remember seeing him typing with his neck at a 90-degree angle until someone figured out how to fix it."
Mr. Goodman's desk was piled with papers, both atop and below, and he maintained a Jenga-like stack of notebooks. He would carry a wealth of papers home each night, rereading and rechecking details.
After leaving Gannett Mr. Goodman began writing immigration-related articles for the left-leaning The Progressive, and his journalism was so powerful and poignant that he was awarded the prestigious 2019 David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism, an honor from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Sam Goodman recalled that he offered to spread the word about his father's award over social media channels. "I said, 'Do you want me to post it?' And he said, 'No, that's OK.' "
That response may have been reflective of both Mr. Goodman's humble nature and his aversion to seismic changes in the work of journalism.
"He hated social media," Sam Goodman said. "He hated the modern style of journalism. ... He never cared about any of the stuff and he thought it ultimately led to an inferior product."
'Powerfully illuminated ... individual struggles'
Mr. Goodman, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard University, where he received a Masters in European history, is survived by Caroline, his wife of 41 years; his son, Sam; his brother, Dr. J. Jay Goodman (Terry); his sister, Janice Adadi; his sisters-in-law, Idy Goodman and Sharon Zane (Gregory Macosko); and his nieces, nephews, and cousins.
After college, he wrote articles from abroad for the Milwaukee Journal, then went on to join the Committee for Public Justice, where he started a newsletter, called "Justice Watch," scrutinizing the U.S. Department of Justice.
His later work at The Progressive, which was his final reporting job, drew plaudits from those working to improve the nation's frayed immigration system.
Mr. Goodman "thoughtfully and powerfully illuminated many people’s individual struggles with our inhumane immigration system,” Mrill Ingram, a former web editor at The Progressive, said in an online column from Norman Stockwell, publisher of The Progressive.
Bill Lueders, who edited Goodman’s work for both the web and print magazine, said in the column: “Jim represented the highest echelon of journalists — the kind who care, the kind who write to make a difference in people’s lives, as he surely did. What a loss to the world."
Having been ill for several days, Mr. Goodman Friday finally relented and went to the hospital as he found himself struggling with breath. His condition worsened overnight; he died early Saturday.
However, until the end, he was the consummate reporter known to family, colleagues, friends, readers and the community. As he prepared to go to the emergency room Friday, he had Caroline pack up what she described as a "5-pound bag of notebooks."
He had an article to work on.
Contact Gary Craig at gcraig@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at gcraig1.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: James Goodman, longtime D&C reporter, dies at age 73
