Devin Herenda

Devin Herenda is a multimedia journalist at KRCR who focuses on people-centered stories at the intersection of entertainment, culture, and community life. Her coverage blends event-driven features with clear reporting on how local businesses, educators, and public safety agencies affect day-to-day life. Earlier experience in entertainment writing and hyperlocal news shapes a style that is accessible, detailed, and rooted in the voices of organizers, experts, and residents.

Local Festivals and Cultural Events

Herenda’s entertainment coverage often starts with local festivals and arts events, using them as windows into the wider creative community. In her piece on the inaugural Sinister Sundial Film Festival at Riverfront Playhouse, she lays out the basic details of the event while highlighting its status as a first-time festival and the ambition behind launching it.

The story balances programming information and schedule with context about its role in expanding the region’s film culture.

She takes a similarly layered approach to long-running events. Her report on the Oroville Salmon Festival describes the celebration of the Feather River and the return of salmon, but it also emphasizes the expected attendance and economic impact on local businesses.

Activities such as the 3K Salmon Run, a car show, and family-friendly attractions are presented alongside projected visitor numbers and comments from the local chamber of commerce leadership, showing how an entertainment event functions as both tradition and economic engine.

Herenda’s entertainment beat also reaches into lifestyle venues.

In coverage of the Italian-inspired restaurant Lucente Cucina, she treats a new dining destination as part of the broader cultural fabric, focusing on how a restaurant opening contributes to the local food scene. She extends this treatment to other stories, such as her feature on Soul Connections, a spiritual products retailer in Mount Shasta, where she ties national growth in the spiritual products market to local demand and the store’s evolving role in the community.

Community Business and Lifestyle Features

Herenda frequently uses entertainment and lifestyle subjects as entry points into business and consumer stories. The Soul Connections piece underscores how she reports on market trends through a single retailer, explaining how increasing interest in spiritual products translates into foot traffic, product offerings, and business decisions.

The tone remains straightforward, with a clear emphasis on what the trend means for both the shop and its customers.

Her coverage of weight-loss drugs centers on legal and consumer risks rather than celebrity culture. In the story on potential risks related to seeking out weight-loss medications, she builds the piece around an attorney’s warnings, outlining specific concerns about how people obtain these drugs and what could go wrong. The article treats health and lifestyle as a legal and safety issue, giving viewers practical guidance rather than promotional content.

This approach - starting from entertainment or lifestyle angles and moving into business, legal, or health implications - shows up across her work. Restaurant openings, spiritual retail, and festival coverage are framed not just as things to attend or buy, but as decisions and trends with impact on local economies, consumers, and workers.

Education and Youth Programs

Herenda devotes significant reporting to education and youth-focused institutions, often linking them back to long-term community outcomes.

In her story on Shasta College’s Fire Academy, she explains how the program has trained around 2,000 candidates and now supplies more than half of one city’s fire department staff. The piece uses clear numbers and institutional history to show how a training program shapes a critical public service workforce.

Her report on Redding School of the Arts’ $9.8 million high school campus project breaks down the scope of the new facility - square footage, number of classrooms, multipurpose spaces, and administrative offices - alongside the construction timeline and future plans. She also notes that a planned second phase will add a community performing arts theater, connecting bricks-and-mortar details to expanded access to arts education and performance.

In coverage of the Shasta County Office of Education’s partnership with the University of Arkansas on a doctoral cohort, her focus is again on opportunity and structure. The article explains how the cohort works for educators pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership, outlines the timing of the second cohort, and clearly states admission deadlines for the next intake. Across these education stories, Herenda’s reporting concentrates on who benefits, how programs are organized, and what timelines and commitments look like for participants.

Public Safety and Legal Reporting

Alongside entertainment and community features, Herenda regularly covers public safety and legal topics, maintaining the same emphasis on accessible detail. In her Cal Fire story on arson arrests, she reports specific arrest counts in different units and compares figures year over year, showing the effect of increased investigative staffing on outcomes.

The piece connects those numbers to broader concerns about human-caused fires and the resources required to investigate them.

Her report on the Anderson Police Department’s K-9 program introduces a series on K-9 “heroes” while remaining grounded in facts. She describes how the program operates along a major transportation corridor and cites concrete seizure totals - more than 200 pounds of hard drugs over two years - linking the presence of trained dogs to measurable enforcement results.

The narrative gives readers a clear sense of how specialized units function, without losing sight of specific metrics.

Herenda also tackles preparedness and risk through expert-driven features.

In a story on tree health ahead of fire season, she builds the coverage around an arborist’s explanation of how well-maintained trees can better withstand strong winds and reduce fire risk. The piece translates technical guidance into straightforward advice, again reflecting her habit of grounding safety topics in expert voices and actionable information.

A separate report on an attorney warning about weight-loss drugs extends this pattern, treating legal expertise as the backbone of a consumer-focused safety story.

Entertainment Writing and Community Storytelling Background

Herenda’s current work at KRCR is shaped by a background that combines formal journalism training, entertainment writing, and hyperlocal reporting. She studied journalism at Pasadena City College, where she wrote for the campus newspaper, gaining experience in reporting and storytelling. In 2020, she received the Society of Professional Journalists Greater Los Angeles Chapter Lisa A.

Davidson Memorial Scholarship, underscoring her commitment to the craft early in her career.

Before joining KRCR, she wrote for entertainment publications including BuzzFeed, Nicki Swift, and Songwriting Magazine, building familiarity with pop culture and arts coverage that now informs her focus on festivals, film events, and lifestyle stories. She also reported for the hyperlocal outlet myBurbank News from 2020 to 2023, breaking community stories and expanding into video reporting.

During that time, she hosted the “Local Legends with Devin” segment on the myBurbank Talks podcast, profiling notable community figures and refining her interview-driven style.

Across her current and past work, the through-line is a consistent emphasis on people, institutions, and practical impact. Whether the subject is a film festival, a new restaurant, an educator cohort, or a K-9 unit, Herenda organizes each story around clear explanations, sourced voices, and concrete details that show how events and decisions affect the communities she covers.