Mother Jones Hires Garrison Hayes as Video Correspondent

Mother Jones announced the hiring of popular TikTok and Instagram personality Garrison Hayes to the newly created position of Video Correspondent, after a year as Mother Jones’ inaugural Creator-in-Residence, during which he produced some of the organization’s most-viewed content and inspired droves of people to start following Mother Jones on social media.

“I like to think of Garrison’s work as a bold new direction for Mother Jones’ proud tradition of explanatory reporting: unpacking overlooked histories; debunking racist myths; and remixing past and present to make sense of it all,” said Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery. “This year his sharp insight and gift for storytelling will be more crucial than ever in capturing and explaining what’s at stake in the country. I can’t wait to see what we come up with together.”

Hayes has already produced more than two dozen videos for Mother Jones that have been viewed more than 6 million times. They include an exploration of the social construct of “white people”; another in which he read racist reactions to one of his earlier videos about reparations (1.6 million views on Instagram alone); and a third that featured a rarely seen TV interview from 1967 with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict. In April 2023, Hayes secured an exclusive interview with Tennessee state legislator Gloria Johnson, on the eve of Republicans’ vote there to oust her and two other Democratic lawmakers for staging a gun control protest on the House floor.

He was also featured last month in Mother Jones’ video announcement about its merger with The Center for Investigative Reporting, which is set to take effect in early February 2024.

Before coming to Mother Jones, Hayes had established himself as an influential creator on social media, where he amassed a following to date of 365,000 on TikTok and 152,000 on Instagram. Based in Nashville, Hayes is a former pastor who developed a deep, direct connection with his congregation when called upon to lead their digital strategy during the pandemic. In 2022, he became one of 25 people selected for SnapChat’s first-ever Black Creator Accelerator program.