Greetings and salutations.
My name is Kaitlin Washburn and I’m a general assignment reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. I’m a San Diego native, though I’ve called the Midwest home for years now.
For the Sun-Times, I’ve written about the viral “Chicago Rat Hole” attraction, a 17-year-old girl earning her doctorate, the Chicago-area people taken hostage during the Israel-Hamas War, an arts program at a state prison and the excitement surrounding the NASCAR Street Race. Before joining the paper full-time, I wrote about a free mammogram program at the University of Chicago and I was a part of the collaboration with the Sun-Times and WBEZ on the 2023 municipal election voter guide.
I am also the topic leader on firearm violence and trauma for the Association of Health Care Journalists. I provide resources, explain relevant research and host webinars to help journalists improve and broaden their gun violence coverage.
Before coming to Chicago, I covered the impacts gun violence has on communities throughout Missouri as a reporter on the Missouri Gun Violence Project at The Kansas City Star. For two years, my reporting took me all over the state — from the neighborhoods hardest hit by constant gunfire in Kansas City and St. Louis to the small towns struggling with firearm suicides.
I wrote about the deadly effects of rolling back gun laws in Missouri over nearly two decades, the ways gun violence and intimate partner abuse intersect, the faces behind Missouri’s deadliest year for gun violence, the efforts of a teen-staffed crisis hotline in St. Louis to reduce stigma and end silence around youth suicide and the stories of those who have died by firearm suicide, including a 16-year-old girl who died after facing bullying in her small town and a young Marine Corps veteran who struggled after returning home from service.
Previously, I was an agriculture reporter covering the omnipresent industry in California’s Central Valley for The Sun-Gazette, also as a part of RFA. I wrote about COVID-19’s impacts on food access, competition for labor between wine grape growers and cannabis growers and the struggles facing California’s wine industry.
Throughout college and various internships, I racked up a number of late nights filing deadline stories after long government meetings. I covered the indictment of a mayor and the ouster of a governor.
I worked on investigations into a state’s strange backlog of pee tests and a city’s fleet of aging firetrucks. I tracked dark money at the federal level, and, for good measure, almost got trampled in the aftermath of a Trump rally.
Here are some of the things I’ve written and the places I’ve worked. I’m also very reachable.