Greetings and salutations.
My name is Kaitlin Washburn and I’m a freelance journalist based in Chicago. I’m a San Diego native and I’ve called the Midwest home for years now.
I currently work part-time for the Chicago Sun-Times. I’ve written about the crowded race for alderperson in the 6th Ward, a free mammogram program at the University of Chicago and covered the story of four men being exonerated after spending decades in prison. I also was a part of the collaboration with the Sun-Times and WBEZ on the 2023 municipal election voter guide.
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.
Kaitlin Washburn 