The Guardian US today announced the hirings of Adria Walker and Melissa Hellmann to the Guardian US’s Race and Equity team, which is led by deputy editor Lauren N. Williams, who joined the publication this past spring to spearhead its coverage of race, identity, and inequality. The new editorial positions form part of the Guardian’s long-term commitment to restorative justice over the next decade, which includes expanding its reporting on race in the US and UK and adding new roles in the Caribbean, South America and Africa.
Adria Walker has already contributed substantially to the Guardian US, and published work in Mississippi Today and the Jackson Free Press. A recent feature for Guardian US explored the historic and fraught election of Patrick Braxton, the first Black mayor of a rural town in Alabama. Another piece for Mississippi Today reported on the fallout that occurred when Roberta Bell, a Black former Louisiana corrections officer, agreed to care for an incarcerated woman’s newborn baby.
Previously, Walker worked for the USA Today Network of New York and the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, where she reported on Black maternal health disparities and the 2020 protests. She is based in her hometown of Jackson, MS, and she’ll help deepen our coverage of Southern communities and the legacies of enslavement.
Melissa Hellmann is an award-winning journalist who has covered underrepresented communities for more than a decade. Most recently, Hellmann was a racial, gender and economic inequality reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, where she investigated state tax laws that fuel the racial wealth gap. Previously, she worked at the Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, the Associated Press, YES! Magazine, TIME Asia and SF Weekly. Her reporting has taken her to the homes of migrant families on the outskirts of Beijing, China; Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank; and a detention center in Tacoma, Washington. Her work has been cited in academic studies, city reports and litigation, and has helped spearhead legislation.
Hellmann served as president of the Seattle Association of Black Journalists from 2019 to 2021, and has received fellowships and professional development grants from the Solutions Journalism Network and NICAR. She is based in Philadelphia, PA, and she’ll investigate policies and systems that impact marginalized communities.
US Editor Betsy Reed said: “I’m so thrilled to welcome Adria and Melissa to the Guardian US. Reporting on race and racial inequity is core to our mission-driven journalism, and intersects with nearly every other area of our coverage. We are excited that our journalism will be enriched by Adria and Melissa’s talents, and I can’t wait for them to get started.”
Deputy Editor for Race and Equity Lauren N. Williams said: “Adria and Melissa are two of the most thoughtful and enterprising journalists in our industry. They are both driven by a commitment to pursuing the truth, to investigating systems of power, and to exploring the full spectrum of life in America for people of color. The Guardian’s journalism will benefit immensely by having them as part of our newsroom.”
Guardian Media Group (GMG), is the publisher of theguardian.com, one of the largest English-speaking news websites in the world. Since launching its US and Australian digital editions in 2011 and 2013, respectively, traffic from outside the UK now represents around two-thirds of the Guardian’s total digital audience.
Guardian US has more than 100 members of editorial staff across bureaus in New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. In 2022, the Guardian US averaged 41 million unique visitors per month and now has nearly 250,000 recurring supporters in the US. The Guardian US is renowned for its Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency and for other award-winning work, including The Paradise Papers. Today, the Guardian US is known for its urgent coverage of the climate crisis, politics, race and immigration, guns, gender, the arts, and more.
