During the Comstock silver boom in Virginia City, Nevada, he was owner and editor of the Territorial Enterprise, one of the largest and most influential newspapers on the West Coast.
[1] In 1856 he moved to California with his father and began working as a typesetter at The Golden Era, a leading literary newspaper in San Francisco.
Goodman grew the Enterprise from a struggling local paper into one of the preeminent west coast newspapers with a national following.
It was known for its expert reporting on the mining industry, its literary quality, and its editorial stances against corruption in business and government.
Although Clemens had published short stories previously, his work under Goodman's editorship at the Territorial Enterprise was credited with giving the author his initial "start" due to the extensive circulation of the newspaper.
[10] Goodman sold his Virginia City newspaper in 1874, returned to San Francisco and took a seat on the Pacific Stock Exchange.
Goodman gave credit to Gustavus A. Eisen for directing his attention to the problems of the Maya inscriptions and calendar.
Most of the photographs were supplied by Alfred Maudslay, an English archaeologist who made significant contributions to Central American archeology.
[5] Goodman spent 12 years puzzling over the glyphs and ultimately determined that more than half of the inscriptions were related to mathematics and the Maya calendar.