Cardinal News is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan news site that serves Southwest and Southside Virginia and the founder and editor of it are profiled in this segment of Inside Scoop.
Cardinal News was created in the summer of 2021, as legacy newspapers throughout Southwest and Southside Virginia were facing additional devastating staff reductions brought on by an out-of-state corporate owner. Luanne Rife has worked in local news for nearly four decades as a reporter, editor, editorial page editor, and commentary editor at newspapers in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Tennessee. She took an early retirement from The Roanoke Times in April 2021, after 16 years there, when she learned continued staff cutbacks meant little ability to do in-depth reporting. Luanne received national fellowships from the Association of Health Care Journalists, The Gerontological Society of America and the University of Southern California’s Center for Health Journalism to support substantial reporting projects. She has won dozens of journalism awards, including national honors, but is most proud of two from non-journalism organizations. She was named mental health journalist of the year by the Roanoke region’s National Alliance on Mental Health, and is the only journalist honored with the Charles Crowder Jr. Award by the Virginia Rural Health Association. She cofounded Cardinal News in order to create a sustainable news organization to tell the important stories of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Dwayne Yancey has more than four decades of experience in Virginia journalism, including 39 years with The Roanoke Times as a reporter, editor and, for seven years, editorial page editor. During that time he twice won the Virginia Press Association’s D. Latham Mims Award for Editorial Leadership, and was inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. He is the author of “When Hell Froze Over,” a book about Virginia politics, as well as an internationally-produced playwright. He lives in Fincastle.
