Jeffrey Schwaner joins Cardinal News on Monday as our next executive editor.
Schwaner has been a storytelling coach and editor with Gannett’s Virginia papers for more than nine years. He loves working with reporters on everything from their biggest investigative projects to daily beat maintenance.
“He’s exactly the editorial leader we need for Cardinal at this moment in time,” said Executive Director Luanne Rife.
In order to continue to fulfill our mission and to grow, Cardinal News announced in May that Founding Editor Dwayne Yancey would focus more on his columns and community outreach, among other responsibilities, and launched a search for an executive editor focused on storytelling.
“I didn’t know Jeff when we started this search, but he might as well have been sitting right in front of me when I wrote the job description. Most importantly, he understands that people are at the heart of every good story and the reason we tell them,” Rife said.
Schwaner will manage the editorial team that includes Yancey, Managing Editor Megan Schnabel, nine full-time reporters, two part-time copy editors and a stable of freelancers.
“I’m honored and very excited to join Cardinal at this point in the newsroom’s evolution,” Schwaner said. “Cardinal’s already delivered so much strong journalism to multiple audiences in Southwestern and Southside Virginia. We’ve just begun to serve these communities. We’ll step into our fourth year with even more watchdog and investigative work and powerful storytelling to help our readers stay informed and empowered.”
Projects he’s written or coached have gotten an innocent man released from prison, changed the way the state reports information on medical professionals under investigation, and revealed a decades-old coverup by city police and his own newspaper to keep news about a serial rapist away from the public. He’s interviewed vultures and witches, followed Bigfoot hunters into the George Washington National Forest, and accompanied hospice patients into the last days of their lives. Schwaner and the reporters he’s coached have won dozens of first place awards from the Virginia Press Association for in-depth and investigative reporting, data reporting and feature writing.
Schwaner won the 2017 Freedom of Information Award from the Virginia Coalition for Open Government for an investigative story about Virginia pharmacies. The 2022 Gannett project Perilous Course, in which he coached 18 reporters, was honored by the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Along with his storytelling and coaching skills, Schwaner is skilled at harnessing the analytics and metrics so key to understanding our audience and how they engage with stories. His work to attract and retain loyal readers for The News Leader in Staunton was recognized by Gannett for Innovation in 2023.
Schwaner grew up in Rhode Island. He graduated from Cornell University. After traveling up and down the East Coast, he and his wife, Mary, settled in Virginia, where they’ve raised their children and lived for the last 19 years. He can be reached at jeffrey@cardinalnews.org.
