Herald receives grant to cover the working class

EVERETT — The Daily Herald, in partnership with the national service program Report for America, has hired Katie Hayes to report on the working class.

Hayes comes from the Shelton-Mason County Journal, where she covers local government. Prior to that she did freelance reporting on private militias for InvestigateWest and Crosscut, freelanced for The Olympian and worked at The Chronicle in Centralia. She also created a blog for her own reporting on police accountability issues in Olympia and interned at The Riverfront Times in her hometown of St. Louis. She is a 2017 graduate of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

At The Herald, Hayes will focus on a segment of the community whose stories often go untold. That includes struggles with housing, employment, transportation, education, mental health, immigration, addiction, homelessness and a litany of other problems that plague a population that more and more finds itself seemingly left behind.

She’ll also examine the impact that political and social policy have on the working class, and document the daily effort required to get and stay ahead in one of the nation’s richest and most expensive metropolitan areas.

“I’m thrilled to join The Daily Herald and look forward to meeting the Everett community,” Hayes said. “What I find most exciting about this position is the chance to dig deep into issues that matter most to readers. Every issue imaginable affects the working class and this beat is a great opportunity to learn more about topics readers value. I look forward to learning more about which issues matter to you.”

Hayes begins work June 1.

“Katie is a proven talent, a tenacious reporter and we’re excited to have her join The Herald,” said Executive Editor Phillip O’Connor. “With the help of Report for America, we continue to invest in our newsroom at a time when local journalism faces unprecedented financial pressure. Her hiring represents our commitment to our community and to our public service mission.”

Report for America is an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, a non-profit journalism organization. The program places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Hayes is one of 300 journalists in the 2021-22 Report for America corps, which was announced Tuesday.

“The crisis in our democracy, disinformation and polarization, is in many ways a result of the collapse of local news,” said Steven Waldman, co-founder and president of Report for America. “We have a unique opportunity to reverse this decline by filling newsrooms with talented journalists who not only view journalism as a public service, but who can make trusted connections with the communities they serve.”

Report for America employs a unique funding match model, paying half of a corps member’s salary while encouraging and supporting local news partners to contribute one-quarter, and local and regional funders to contribute the final quarter.

“Report for America is committed to helping The Daily Herald provide accurate, fact-based reporting that the Snohomish County community can depend on through public-service minded journalists,” said Teri Hayt, deputy director of corps excellence for Report for America. “The Daily Herald is a trusted partner and we are excited to see that the community also supports their efforts.”

The Herald, in partnership with the Community Foundation of Snohomish County, has raised more than $275,000 in tax-deductible contributions from our readers to support Report for America and The Daily Herald’s Investigative and Environmental and Climate Change reporting funds since first established in 2020.

If interested in supporting that work, please go to www.heraldnet.com/donate.