CATCHING UP WITH FORMER BJ GUILD PRESIDENT AND LEAD REPORTER FOR BJ GOLDSMITH SAGA PULITZER-WINNING COVERAGE

               RICK RIEFF IN SUIT AND TIE

RICK RIEFF AT GODFATHER AND UNCLE JACK SURIANO'S 100TH BIRTHDAY 

CATCHING UP WITH

Rick Rieff

 

Rick Rieff, business writer and the lead reporter on a BJ team that won a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Goodyear's battle with Anglo-French corporate raider’s Sir James Goldsmith.

It cost Goodyear $3 billion to make Goldsmith go away. $618.8 million went to Goldsmith and his partners.

As BJ Guild president Rick had the foresight to push for a 401(k) that the Guild got from the BJ in 1989. That helped me, when I retired in 1996, build up enough money that I’m still financially secure in 2024 after 28 years of not working at the BJ.

Thanks, Rick.

 

In 2008 Rick married Mary Ann Brown, senior vice president of Pacific Life Insurance Company.  Rick has a daughter, Jennie; a son-in-law, Orange County, California Fire Authority Capt. Steve Miller; and a grandson, Elias Stephen Miller. Jennie and Steve made Rick a grandfather in 2004.

He golfs in California where he’s “two strokes off a single-digit handicap.”

For those who want to resume contact with Rick his new email address is rr@rickre8iff.com.

Rick leaves in Laguna Beach, California where, he tells me, “I’m still enjoying the California sunshine, the California ‘sunshine tax’ not so much.

Rick is host/producer of PBS SoCal, executive director of the Orange County Business Journal. He came from Chicago after a Northwestern University Journalism adventure.

He's a 4-time Golden Mike winners for his TV ventures, received three-time Emmy nominations and in 2018 of the Orange County Press Club's Lifetime Achievement Award. 

 

He began his journalism career as a sports intern with the Chicago Sun-Times and as a stringer for the Chicago Tribune. His first full-time reporting job was at the Norwalk (Ohio) Reflector.

 

He went from Norwalk to walk into BJ at 44 E. Exchange Street.

 

Next came his role as managing editor of Business First in Columbus, then editor in New York state of the Westchester Business Journal before joining Forbes magazine as a staff writer.

 

Somewhere along the line Rick worked in media and journalism professor at Chapman University in Orange, California.

 

From 2004 through 2018 Rick hosted and produced "Inside OC with Rick Reiff” and "SoCal Insider with Rick Reiff," which aired on PBS SoCal, the Los Angeles region's PBS flagship station. The shows also aired on KDOC-TV and Cox Cable.

 

He co-hosted "Studio SoCal" for three seasons on PBS SoCal which won the Golden Mike for Best News Public Affairs Program in Southern California, Division B, in 2011 and "SoCal Insider" won the same award in 2012 and 2013.