Journalists

Ireland Hayes

Ireland joined Foothills Forum as a full-time reporter in 2023 after graduating from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication with a degree in journalism and minor in music. As a student, she gained valuable experience in reporter and editor positions at The Red & Black, an award-winning student newspaper, and contributed to Grady Newsource and the Athens Banner-Herald. She spent three years as an editorial assistant at Georgia Magazine, UGA’s quarterly alumni publication, and interned with The Bitter Southerner.

Growing up in a small town in Southeast Georgia, Ireland developed a deep appreciation for rural communities and the unique stories they have to tell. She completed undergraduate research on news deserts, ghost papers and the ways rural communities in Georgia are being forced to adapt to a lack of local news. This research further sparked her interest in a career contributing to the preservation of local and rural news.

Reach Ireland at [email protected]

Mary Ann Kuhn

Veteran journalist Mary Ann Kuhn, a former editor of the Rappahannock News, has joined Foothills part-time as an editor and reporter. She fills two critical needs:

– A frontline “go-to” editor when Foothills journalists file their stories. We’ve been relying on a small corps of volunteer editors operating ad hoc. Under our new system, Mary Ann serves as the primary editor. All stories will continue to receive a “second read” by a Foothills volunteer editor before being released to the Rapp News or other outlets.

– Mary Ann is an accomplished reporter/writer who will be able to tackle some of the many stories we’ve been unable to pursue because we simply don’t have enough journalists.

Over her career, Mary Ann has worked in both print and broadcast for some of the nation’s leading news organizations (The Washington Star, The Washington Post and CBS News, among them). She was editor of the Rappahannock News from 2003-2005 and, for many years, owned and operated the historic Middleton Inn in Little Washington. She has a deep knowledge of Rappahannock County.

Separate from her position with Foothills Forum, Mary Ann has been hired by the Rappahannock News as an editor. Her responsibilities include editing stories, coordinating graphics and photography, reporting and playing a key role in putting the entire paper together.

Reach Mary Ann at [email protected]

Randy Reiland

Randy Rieland was a newspaper reporter and magazine editor for more than 20 years, starting with stints at the Pittsburgh Press and Baltimore Sun, and moving on to become editor of Pittsburgh Magazine and a senior editor at The Washingtonian.

He made the switch to digital media in 1995 as part of the team that launched Dicovery.com, the website for the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and other Discovery Communications Networks. He ultimately was promoted to senior vice president of Discovery Channel Digital Media.

Rieland has returned to print journalism and has written for Smithsonian and Johns Hopkins Magazine, in addition to being a regular contributor to Rappahannock News for Foothills Forum, for which he has been awarded first place awards for explanatory journalism from the Virginia Press Association.

He also is now a volunteer with the National Park Service at Arlington House, above Arlington Cemetery. He and his wife, Carol Ryder, have owned a house off Tiger Valley Road since 2005.

Reach Randy at [email protected]

Tim Carrington

Tim Carrington has worked in journalism and economic development, writing for The Wall Street Journal for fifteen years from New York, London and Washington. He later joined the World Bank, where he launched a training program in economics journalism for reporters and editors in Africa and the former Soviet Union. He also served as senior communications officer for the World Bank’s Africa Region.

He is author of The Year They Sold Wall Street, published by Houghton Mifflin, and worked at McGraw Hill Publications before joining the Wall Street Journal. His writing on development issues has appeared in The Globalist, World Paper, Enterprise Africa, the 2003 book, The Right To Tell: The Role of Mass Media in Economic Development.

He is a regular writer for The Rappahannock News through the Foothills Forum. His profiles and stories on the county’s political economy have earned several awards from the Virginia Press Association.

Carrington is also a painter, whose work is regularly shown at the Middle Street Gallery in Little Washington. He grew up in Richmond, Va., and graduated from the University of Virginia. In 2006, he and his wife became part-time resident in Rappahannock County, which is currently their legal residence.

Reach Tim at [email protected]

Paul McGeough

Born in Ireland and raised in Australia, Paul McGeough is a former managing editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. As the Herald’s Chief Foreign Correspondent, he spent decades reporting from and writing books on the Middle East and Central Asia – Iraq and Afghanistan in particular. During his career he won eight Walkley Awards, Australia’s Pulitzer Prize equivalent; was twice named Australian Journalist of the year; and his book Kill Khalid, the story of Hamas, was named Book of the Year in Australia. Happily retired in Rappahannock County, McGeough builds and gardens – when he’s not engaged in Foothill Forum’s journalistic pursuits.

Reach Paul at [email protected]

Bob Hurley

Bob Hurley has been a member of the Foothills reporting team for several years. In addition to writing in-depth news articles, Bob regularly contributes Doer’s Profiles which feature stories about people who make important contributions to the Rappahannock community.

After graduating from college, Bob worked for several years at the ABC News bureau in Washington, D.C., and as a communications director for the National Wildlife Federation. Later, he spent over a decade in the United States Senate as a senior staff member working on major environmental laws including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air, coastal, and wetlands protection legislation. Subsequently, he ran a government relations firm specializing in environment, energy and sustainability issues.

Bob and his wife, Heather, have had a home in Rappahannock since 2016. He enjoys being involved in a wide range of community activities including the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection, RAAC Theatre, Headwaters Starfish Mentoring Program, the Lions Club and Rapp at Home. He enjoys fishing, gardening, hiking, and biking.

Reach Bob at [email protected]

Luke Christopher

Luke Christopher is a “Best of D.C.” photographer and two-time winner “Best in Show” for the Virginia Press Association photo essay award. He started his career as a writerat the University of Maryland’s Diamondback. With a passion for telling visual stories viaphoto and video, he interned at National Geographic Television and worked as a videoeditor at Discovery Channel.

Luke’s photography clients have included The National Gallery of Art, The Washington
Post, Washington Times, Washingtonian magazine and The Embassy of India. In his
travels, he produced a documentary for the Cyprus Tourist Board. Since 2016, he has
worked as a photographer, videographer and reporter for the Rappahannock News and
the newspaper’s nonprofit journalism partner, Foothills Forum.

Covering local government meetings and events has connected him with the farmers,
first-responders, local businesses, charities, schools, artists and all the other wonderful
people who make Rappahannock County, Va., so special.

Reach Luke at [email protected]

Laura Stanton

Laura Stanton is an award-winning artist who specializes in infographics, having spent more than two decades on the staffs of The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News.

She taught information graphics at the University of Missouri Journalism School for a decade. She has run LaVidaCo Communications since 2012, creating illustrations, presentations and animations for a wide range of clients, including the Rappahannock News and the Foothills Foundation.

She loves working with other journalists to bring a visual storytelling component to their high-quality, deeply reported stories.

Fair. Trusted. Reporting in Rappahannock County and across Virginia’s Piedmont.