As of today, Cardinal News has a new business reporter — Matt Busse. He succeeds Megan Schnabel, who was our inaugural business reporter until she was promoted to managing editor in February.
Matt spent nearly 19 years at The News & Advance in Lynchburg, most recently as its managing editor. He began as a reporter covering business, local government and courts, and later served as the digital editor for multiple Virginia newsrooms. A Richmond native, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in mass communications. He lives in Lynchburg. You can reach him at matt@cardinalnews.org.
He’ll be covering economic issues across Southwest and Southside, with particular attention on energy and the environment.
We started in September 2021 with two full-time staff reporters. With Matt coming on board, we now have six, triple our original reporting staff. Our full staff now consists of 10 full-time employees plus a part-time copy editor. You can see our full staff list here.
Cardinal News is based on a public broadcasting model and is entirely supported by donors who have no say in news decisions: see our policy. We also don’t hire anyone until we have a guaranteed multi-year funding stream to support a position.
We’re currently raising money for three other positions. We’d like to add a technology reporter to cover the growing tech sector in the region. We’d like to add a health care reporter; there’s currently no full-time reporter west of Hampton Roads committed to covering health care. And we’d like to add a reporter specifically focused on Lynchburg, the second biggest metro in our region, just as we have other reporters based in Bristol, Danville and Martinsville. You can help us fund those positions. Cardinal News is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit. Here’s how to donate. We also now offer daily and weekly sponsorships of our newsletters, similiar to the “day sponsors” on public radio.