Wichita Eagle hires three new reporters, starts two new beats and adds an intern

If you think you’ve noticed a lot of new bylines at The Eagle lately, you’re quite observant.

The publication has hired three new reporters; a couple of job titles have shuffled; and The Eagle has a new intern for the summer.

Kevin Bumgarner is the most senior reporter, and he may be a name some in the Wichita area remember from the 1980s and ’90s when he started his career.

Bumgarner was born in Austin, Texas, and grew up in Derby.

“Whenever I’m around a cocky Texan who wants to have one over on me, I say I’m just as Texan as you are,” he said.

However, he added, “I proudly claim that I grew up in the Midwest.”

When he was younger and in elementary school, Bumgarner said, he “realized that when I knew things and told them to people, they actually cared what I was saying.”

“I saw the impact that words had (and) information had.”

Bumgarner graduated from Wichita State University, where instead of working for the Sunflower, the student newspaper, he joined journalism professor Les Anderson’s Ark Valley News.

Bumgarner’s career has taken him to various locales nationally, most recently just outside of Omaha where he was executive editor and general manager over 11 community newspapers.

He’s been wanting to return closer to home, though, and get back to writing full time.

“That’s just what my original passion always was.”

Bumgarner is one of two new suburban reporters at The Eagle.

He’s covering Goddard, Maize, Park City and Valley Center.

For instance, he’s already been covering Goddard’s efforts to regulate future duplex development.

Bumgarner is going to continue to cover the pushback and problems the city is encountering as it goes through the regulation process, and his goal is to keep residents informed.

He said he’s enjoying being back in the greater Wichita area.

“Lots of things have changed, but at its core, the people and the friendliness and the communities . . . are still just what I remember.”

Lindsay Smith is The Eagle’s other new suburban reporter, and she’s fast becoming a veteran at the publication, having started her Eagle career as an intern while at WSU and then becoming the service journalism reporter in late 2022.

Now, she’s covering Derby, Andover, Bel Aire, Haysville and Kechi.

Journalism is something Smith said she became passionate about because she loves hearing stories and then sharing them with others.

She said it’s “such a great feeling meeting new people and connecting with them and being able to tell their stories.”

Since starting her new suburban beat, Smith said it’s been particularly interesting to her to cover the uproar over the police chief’s social media posts in Kechi and learn how different people in the community felt differently about them.

Through “so many stories, I’ve realized how connected people are to their communities.”

Smith is committed to her journalism career and thinks she one day may like to teach journalism at some level.

“I know I’ll have a lot of good stories to tell my students one day.”

Replacing Smith as the service journalism reporter is another familiar reporter from the The Eagle’s past, although her name has changed slightly.

Kaitlyn Alatidd, formerly Kaitlyn Alanis, married former Eagle reporter Jason Tidd in 2023, and they both changed their last names to Alatidd — a combination of their names.

A California native, Kaitlyn Alatidd moved to Kansas in 2014 to go to K-State for a degree in agricultural education, “but quickly realized that wasn’t for me.”

She “ended up finding a love for journalism and telling stories” and first came to The Eagle as an intern in 2017.

Alatidd joined The Eagle full time that fall as a real-time reporter, covering local trendy stories and breaking news. She ended up in the same role for the publication’s parent company, McClatchy.

What attracted her to the service journalism job is Alatidd wants to share news with readers that they may find particularly helpful or need advice about.

“It’s essentially answering questions or sharing tips or advice or explaining complicated topics for readers.”

For instance, she’s investigated noxious weeds and looked into whether certain things are legal, such as sleeping at Kansas rest areas.

“It’s just kind of interesting.”

One-time business reporter Bryan Horwath also has returned to The Eagle from a few Las Vegas newspapers.

“I always had good feelings about The Eagle and the people,” he said. “Every place isn’t like that.”

The St. Paul native had left Kansas to see a bit more of the country but is happy to be back as a breaking news reporter.

“Las Vegas is just a lot,” he said. “It kind of wears on you after a while.”

Not to mention, he said, “The summers, it’ll get up to, like, 117 degrees sometimes.”

Horwath describes himself as a Midwest kind of guy.

His job at The Eagle is to report “whatever breaks during the course of the day.”

“It’ll be a lot of cops-and-courts type of stuff. Breaking weather news. Whatever pops up,” he said. “But you also kind of do other stuff as well. . . . It’s kind of exciting because you don’t know what’s going to happen day to day.”

Horwath said he likes being out and about and said if he had to be confined to a desk job, “I would probably starve.”

Finally, The Eagle has a new intern for the summer.

Kass Lewis will be heading into his senior year this fall at WSU, where he most recently has been news editor of the Sunflower student newspaper.

He said he thought about getting an engineering degree but turned to journalism instead.

“I have a pretty big interest in government and politics reporting, and that kind of started from my first-ever election that I got to vote in,” he said. “I started paying attention a lot more.”

Before voting, Lewis said he started reading all he could about candidates and issues and realized, “It’d be cool if I could write those for people.”

The native of Oswego said he has seen misinformation spread to negative ends.

“There’s so much information out there, and I want to help get that information to people,” Lewis said. Often times, he said, “They’re just not utilizing it.”

Since joining The Eagle, Lewis has written on a variety of subjects, including a feature obituary on a Marine general who served in Vietnam.

He said it was “so cool getting to learn about who he was.”

“I’ve always loved talking to older people because I just love hearing about people’s lives,” Lewis said. “Everybody has lived an interesting life whether they know it or not.”

If you have a news tip or question for any of the new Eagle reporters, you can reach them at: kevin.bumgarner@wichitaeagle.com; lsmith@wichitaeagle.com; kaitlyn.alatidd@wichitaeagle.com; bryan.horwath@wichitaeagle.com; and kass.lewis@wichitaeagle.com.