Mike King, veteran AJC editor and writer, Joins Hayslett Group LLC as Senior Counsel

Former Atlanta Journal-Constitution medical and healthcare writer Mike King has joined Hayslett Group LLC as Senior Counsel, the firm announced.

King joins Hayslett Group following a 36-year newspaper career that focused heavily on science, medicine and health policy. In his final assignment at the AJC, King served as a member of the newspaper's editorial board and was responsible for commentary on important state, local and national issues, including health care reform, SCHIP, Georgia's mental health system, racial disparities in health outcomes and public health funding.

His series of "Saving Grady" editorials - 46 over a period of 18 months - outlined the scope of the problem with Georgia's largest public hospital, proposed solutions and the roles local and state government should be playing to address the issue of indigent care funding. Decision-makers in metro Atlanta credit the newspaper, and King's editorials, with providing the impetus needed to eventually reshape Grady's governance and help the hospital begin to reverse its cycle of debt.

Hayslett Group, an Atlanta-based communications firm established in 1994, has long had one of Georgia's most experienced and effective healthcare communications practices. Over the years, the firm has managed communications and grassroots campaigns that have, among other achievements, helped defeat legislative assaults on the state's certificate-of-need system, put trauma funding on a statewide ballot, and re-establish the state's public health agency as a standalone department.

"Mike King is a tremendous addition to the Hayslett Group team," said Charles N. Hayslett, the firm's founder and CEO. "Few people can match his depth of knowledge on medical matters and health policy, let alone his abilities as a thinker and a writer, and he has earned tremendous standing in health care circles in Georgia and beyond. I am very pleased to be able to bring him onto our team."

"For me, this is an excellent fit," said King. "Over the years, Hayslett Group has proven itself to be a capable and credible communicator on medicine and health care, among many other subjects. They have a strong track record of enabling their clients to communicate effectively about often complicated and intricate messages."

King began his journalism career in 1972 at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., serving over 15 years as a reporter, editor and Washington correspondent. As a Washington reporter in 1982, he was among the first to link the tobacco industry's stealth cigarette marketing campaigns to teenage smoking. He was recruited to the AJC in 1987 and served over the next 21 years as a science and medical writer and editor; then as Metro Editor supervising more than 125 reporters and editors, and then as the public editor before finally moving to the editorial board. He retired from the AJC in 2008.