W&L to Host ‘Meet the Press’ Panel with Virginia News Leaders Journalists from six news outlets in Virginia will discuss the current state of local journalism in a Sept. 16 panel moderated by W&L’s Eric Deggans.

By Emily Innes Stanley
September 2, 2026

Washington and Lee University will host a “Meet the Press” panel with Virginia journalists at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 16 in Hillel House, located on W&L’s campus at 117 W. Washington St.

The panel is free and open to the public and is sponsored by W&L’s Knight Program in Media Ethics and the Office of Community Based Learning.

Panelists will include David Seidel ’97, news director of Virgina Public Radio’s Radio IQ; Angilee Shah, editor-in-chief of Charlottesville Tomorrow; Doug Harwood ’74, editor of the Rockbridge Advocate; Megan Schnabel, managing editor of Cardinal News; Darryl Woodson ’83, editor of The News-Gazette; and Chris Coates, senior director of local news at Lee Enterprises, whose brands include The Roanoke Times and Richmond-Times Dispatch. The panel will be moderated by Eric Deggans, Knight Professor of Journalism and Media Ethics at W&L and critic-at-large at NPR.

The panel will discuss the difficulty of navigating misinformation and disinformation in today’s media, the influence of artificial intelligence on journalism, local issues fueling news reports, the enduring impact of journalism ethics on news reporting and more. Panelists will also answer questions from the audience about how to get items in the news, how they make decisions about what is considered news and the challenges of local journalism in the modern age.