Staff writer

Office phone: 757-446-2629

Email: kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com

Kate Wiltrout reports on military affairs for The Virginian-Pilot. Her responsibilities include coverage of military criminal justice, mental health and environmental issues; she also writes about surface ships and submarines, Fort Eustis and Fort Story, and the impending closure of Fort Monroe, an Army base in Hampton, Va.

Kate joined the Pilot in 2003 after four years covering government at the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News. She spent a year as a general assignment reporter in Virginia Beach, and joined the paper’s military team in mid-2004.

After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, Wiltrout worked for the Associated Press in Indianapolis. She moved to Asia in 1996 after being selected as a Henry Luce Foundation scholar, and spent a year on the staff of The Korea Times, a daily English-language newspaper in Seoul, South Korea. She remained in Seoul to work as a freelance journalist for various outlets, including The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Atlanta Jounral-Constitution, the (Hong Kong) South China Morning Post, and Voice of America radio.

A member of Military Reporters & Editors, Wiltrout was selected as an Ethics Fellow in 2003/2004 by The Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla.  She returned to Poynter in 2008 as part of the institute's "Covering War at Home" seminar.  She is a two-time winner of the Pilot's Slover award for outstanding beat reporting.

Wiltrout lives in Portsmouth.