Contacting us
Phone: 503-575-9930
General inquiries: [email protected]
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Mailing address: 494 State St., #410 • Salem, Oregon 97301
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Have an idea for something we should look into? A suggestion for a person or organization to feature? Do you know about a problem or wrongdoing by a government agency? We want to hear about it.
Contact any of our reporters using the information below. If your information requires anonymity or discretion, please let us know.
Your news team
Abbey McDonald, senior reporter; homelessness, housing and health care
[email protected]
Abbey McDonald joined Salem Reporter in 2022. She previously worked as the business reporter at The Astorian, where she covered labor issues, health care and social services. A University of Oregon grad, she has also reported for the Malheur Enterprise, The News-Review and Willamette Week.
Joe Siess, local government reporter
[email protected]
P: (503) 335-7790
Joe Siess reports on city and county government in the Salem area, and speaks Spanish fluently. He has a master’s degree from the University of Missouri and previously has been a reporter at the Malheur Enterprise, Klamath Fall Herald and News, the Bend Bulletin and the Redmond Spokesman.
Madeleine Moore, public safety reporter
[email protected]
P: (971) 804-1484
Madeleine joined Salem Reporter in 2024 and reports on a variety of topics including public safety, addiction, treatment and the criminal justice system. She came to Salem after graduating from the University of Oregon in June 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
Hailey Cook, business and entertainment reporter, photojournalist
Hailey Cook joined Salem Reporter in 2025, following the completion of an internship through the University of Oregon’s Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism. She works as a reporter and photojournalist, with a focus on business and entertainment, among other topics.
Les Zaitz, editor
[email protected]
P: 541-620-0933
About our editor
Two-time Pulitzer finalist Les Zaitz is an Oregon native. He started his professional journalism career right out of high school, hired in 1973 as a general assignment reporter for the Salem Statesman Journal. He continued writing as a staff reporter and correspondent while attending the University of Oregon, working for the Springfield News, the Oregon Journal, UPI, and the New York Times.
1976-1987 – Reporter for The Oregonian, handling various beats before taking an assignment in 1982 to the newspaper’s investigative team.
1987-2000 – owner and publisher of the weekly Keizertimes newspaper in Oregon. His family still owns the newspaper, which consistently wins journalism awards.
2000-2015 – senior investigative reporter, investigations editor
2016-2025– publisher and editor, Malheur Enterprise in Vale, Oregon.
2018-present – Editor and CEO of Salem Reporter, a digital news source in Salem, Oregon.
2021-2022 – Founding editor, Oregon Capital Chronicle, the Oregon affiliate of States Newsroom.
His family bought the Malheur Enterprise in 2015 to rescue it from closure and Zaitz assumed the duties of publisher after retiring in October 2016. The newspaper since then won state, regional and national journalism awards. The newspaper has had partnerships with ProPublica, Report for America and the Solutions Journalism Network to deepen the Enterprise’s reporting in its rural community. The newspaper also hosts interns, sponsored in part by the University of Oregon and the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.
Les has won state, regional and national journalism awards for more than 40 years. In 2007, he was part of a team that won the prestigious national George Polk Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2014. He is a six-time solo winner of Oregon’s Bruce Baer Award, the state’s top award for investigative reporting. The Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association in 2016 awarded him its highest honor for career achievement – an award not given since 2010. In 2020, he was named an SPJ Fellow, the highest honor of the national Society of Professional Journalists. In 2024 he was inducted into the Oregon Newspaper Hall of Fame.