Editor Spotlight: Kat Bagley, Grist
Katherine (Kat) Bagley is the Editor-in-Chief of Seattle-based Grist, the largest climate-focused newsroom in the U.S, with 40 journalists spread across nearly 20 U.S. states. Grist covers a wide variety of stories related to climate and the environment, including politics and investigations.
With challenges for journalists growing in recent years, Kat knew that she needed to strengthen Grist’s safety practices and create more formal guidelines for the organization. Her participation in the ACOS USA Editor Safety Cohort has enabled her to do this.
After finishing the cohort program in summer 2025, Kat began creating Grist’s first-ever safety and security protocol: a detailed manual that covers digital security, physical safety, and mental health and well-being.
This new set of policies, which also brought in lessons learned from Grist’s coverage of the Texas floods in July 2025, was finalized the following December and includes daily security measures, field protocols, information for extreme weather zones, risk assessments, and the organization’s response to doxxing. Grist has formalized the policies across all editors to ensure a consistent level of awareness and expectation, and is committed to reviewing and updating them every year.
“The safety and security landscape is changing so rapidly, and newsrooms need to provide their journalists with the best guidance possible to protect themselves, their sources, and their publications. The ACOS training was instrumental in giving me the resources to best serve my staff." - Kat Bagley, Editor-in-Chief, Grist
Image: Kat Bagley at the 2025 ACOS Annual Safety Coordination Meeting in London | ACOS / Frankie Mills
