From the Sunshine State to the Golden State — one year at The Sacramento Bee
From The Sacramento Bee’s social media presence, to email alerts and app notifications, meet one of the brains behind the operation: Local engagement and retention reporter, Kat Tran, who just celebrated their one year at The Bee.
In making sure The Bee is best serving our subscribers, Tran and the team have been planning live engagement events, Zoom webinars, and bolstering The Bee’s social media and newsletters in order to meet our readers where they’re at.
Happy one year at The Bee! From being an intern to now a member of the engagement and retention team, what have you learned in your time here?
The only constant of the role is change, Tran says, and they like to use that theme in their personal life as well. They said even though they’ve only been here for a year, their roles have varied quite a bit, from being a food and drink intern, to an audience intern, to now a reporter and cornerstone of the local engagement and retention team.
Another lesson Tran says they’ve learned is how to adapt to the newsroom and Sacramento as a whole, since they traveled 2,800 miles to be here, all the way from Daytona Beach, Florida. They described Daytona Beach as a “small, sleepy beach town” with not much to do for young adults. Moving to a big city, California’s state capitol, was a huge culture shock, Tran says.
“There is so much diversity here: the people, culture, activities, and events, and most importantly, the food!” Tran said. “When it comes to the workplace, it definitely took some time to adjust to the corporate work-life and structure. It’s not easy being a first-generation student and moving across the country post-graduation.”
“What I would do to give back the wisdom I know now to the anxious interns, like I was when I first started,” Tran said.
You are one of the local engagement and retention reporters. What exactly do your day-to-day duties look like in this position?
“I often tell people I’m a glorified social media manager,” Tran said. The role has helped them work on using their video editing skills to create more short-form vertical video for articles, and their visuals skills to create graphics for Instagram posts and stories.
They said their main daily goals are sending email, desktop and mobile alerts, curating newsletters like our specialty Entertainment and Bee Insider newsletters, updating our website and creating graphics to post on our social media platforms.
What do you hope you’re able to provide to Bee readers in your role?
Tran would like to be able to bridge the disconnect between print and digital articles and our social media platforms.
“There are a lot of avenues to reach readers on social media that I’d like The Bee to tap into, since it’s just a long-standing institution,” Tran said.
At the same time, Tran says there’s a general low morale around the role of social media and news today, something that they hope hosting live events with newsmakers and readers can be a solution toward, like a recent Q&A with Mayor Kevin McCarty and City Manager Maraskeshia Smith. They said they are excited to be a part of these initiatives at The Bee, and they feel like sometimes the tools of audience engagement are being underutilized by newsrooms.
“Maybe it’s still a niche part of modern, digital journalism, but most newsrooms should be and need to be tapping into it more,” Tran said.
In your time here, what has been your favorite part of working at The Bee?
“The people,” Tran said. “I definitely feel seen at The Bee with other like-minded coworkers who belong to many different identity groups and interests – the same as I am!”
They also love the “mundane” things in the workplace as well, times when everyone is in their own zone at work.
“I love to see the newsroom buzzing with ideas and stories – it literally buzzes!”
This story was originally published July 4, 2026 at 9:00 AM.
