Ruben Gomez

Producer rgomez@FederalNewsRadio.com 202-895-5348 On Twitter: @rgomezWFED

If you told me several years ago that I would be covering the federal government – speaking to cabinet level secretaries and three-star generals – I wouldn’t have believed you. Never did I imagine that the federal space could be so interesting. And never did I fully appreciate the importance of agencies and contractors. But Federal News Radio changed all that.

I joined the staff in April of 2008. My job as the associate producer was to book guests, write scripts and edit audio for our morning and afternoon shows.

Later that year, I took on the full-time responsibility of running Federal News Radio’s morning-drive program, called then The Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Jane Norris, waking up weekday mornings at 2 a.m.

The job was a whole lot more than just pushing buttons. Think multitasking to the max: working the phones, scanning the news wires, editing audio, writing scripts and pushing a thousand buttons all at once. The satisfaction of a show well done and knowing that we delivered usable news to our listeners drove me to do it over and over again.

Today I wake up with the sun, coordinating interviews for the Federal Drive and working with our other producers to find original, engaging content. I also write for our website and craft stories for the radio.

Before coming to Washington, I lived in Columbus, Oh. There, I worked as a business analyst for a credit bureau. The job allowed me to hone my writing skills and understand complicated technical material. But journalism – the pursuit of important information and telling people about it – always beckoned me.

I earned my bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. While in school, I had a chance to work in TV news as a reporter and anchor for the university’s Capital News Service. But the idea of joining the media world as a full-time professional was hatched in Guam – a tiny U.S. territory in the Pacific just three hours by plane from Tokyo.

In Guam I took my first job in radio, working with a staff of just five. I was not a reporter, but I recall venturing onto the midnight black streets “looking for news” just minutes after a 7.0 magnitude temblor rocked the island. From then on, many more earthquakes and several typhoons called me onto the streets in search of the next “big” story that I could share with everyone. I became more certain than ever that broadcast news was my career of choice.

Today, I enjoy sampling restaurants and exploring nature with my lovely wife and daughter. On the weekends, we like to venture south to visit our amazing extended family. And when we’re not traveling, we like to walk, eat smoothies and take pictures of just about anything.

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