Hays likes to say she has a checkered past because she was a gossip columnist in a former life. She was a reporter for The New York Post’s “Page Six” column and also wrote “Charlotte’s Web,” her own popular gossip column at both The Washington Times and The New York Daily News.
Hays has been described as a former gossip columnist at home in the world of ideas. She has been published in an eclectic list of magazines including The American Spectator, New York Magazine, Spy, National Review, Policy Review, Town & Country, Mirabella, The New Republic, and Crisis. She is especially proud of a series on politics and religion reported from Beirut and a prize winning interview with novelist Walker Percy for the National Catholic Register.