Our Next Speaker

Jeff Schapiro, Political Columnist, Richmond Times-Dispatch; “45 Years Dissecting Commonwealth Politics"  

Jeff Schapiro is an American newspaper reporter and political commentator. A New York City native, he moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1979, shortly after graduating from Georgetown University, and covered politics and policy out of United Press International's news bureau here. 

He was the State Capitol reporter for United Press International and Virginia Business magazine before joining the Times-Dispatch in 1987.  As a politics columnist, he has covered campaigns and government in Virginia for nearly 45 years. 

In 2015, he was honored by Virginia Commonwealth University's Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture with induction into their Virginia Communications Hall of Fame.  W. Taylor Reveley IV, the president of Longwood University, has called him "a giant in the field of journalism in the state." 

His column appears in the Times-Dispatch and many of its sibling newspapers across the state twice a week. Schapiro’s video column is posted Tuesdays on the Times-Dispatch website, timesdispatch.com. He can be followed on X, formerly Twitter, and Facebook.

Schapiro's wife, Clare Schapiro, is a food columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The couple were married in Richmond on September 17, 1988, by Virginia Supreme Court justice John Charles Thomas.