Rich Zahradnik, Executive Director (2022-25)
Rich Zahradnik was the executive director and board chairman of the Hudson Valley Local News Lab Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that publishes the Pelham Examiner, until June 2025. The paper was started by 17 Pelham students along with Zahradnik in May 2018. From its launch, he was the paper’s volunteer mentor, instructor, back-up copyeditor, rewrite man, technology director and chief cook and bottle washer. Before leaving a journalism career to write mystery novels and volunteer on youth newspaper projects, he was a co-founder of the award-winning weekly Peekskill Herald, European bureau chief of the Hollywood Reporter, founding executive producer of CNNfn.com, editorial director and chief operating officer of Goal Media Group and team leader at Bloomberg News. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Wired, When Saturday Comes, the European newspaper, Adweek and Channels magazine. He also started the first online service for British soccer (football) fans. Among other awards, he has won a Webby (CNNfn.com), New York Press Association awards for news, feature and editorial writing (Peekskill Herald), the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America (the novel “Lights Out Summer”) and Best Mystery in the Silver Falchion Awards (the novel “The Bone Records”).
Working on the Pelham Examiner was the most fun he had in journalism.
