Newsroom
Gannett Government Media is home to one of the world’s largest government news organizations. With more than 100 dedicated journalists working in our corporate headquarters, eight domestic and international bureaus, and correspondents in 14 countries, we span the world gathering the latest information that affects the lives and careers of our readers.
Tobias Naegele (703-750-8620) is editor in chief of Gannett Government Media, overseeing all of the company’s editorial products – online, in print and on TV. He joined the company in 1992 as editor of Navy Times and, the following year, launched a new Marine Corps edition of the newspaper. Promoted to executive editor of the Military Times group in 1999, he launched Marine Corps Times as a stand-alone newspaper. He later helped launch the company’s first forays into television and video. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware.
Alex Neill
(703-750-7444) is senior managing editor, with responsibility across the entire Gannett Government Media newsroom. He distinguished himself as managing editor of both Navy Times and Army Times, and during the 2003 Iraq invasion helped coordinate news coverage from the war zone for use across the Gannett and USA Today network as a forward-deployed editor in Qatar. He has also reported for Army Times from the war zone. He previously worked as either an editor or reporter at USA Today, the Marin Independent Journal and the San Francisco Examiner. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University.
M. Scott Mahaskey
(703-750-7438) is managing editor for Interactive & Visual Media, responsible for photo, video, art and online production. Prior to his 2008 promotion, he was one of the company’s most-traveled photographers, having spent more than 12 months embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to our papers and Web sites, his photographs and video have appeared in USA Today, People Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated and scores of daily newspapers worldwide. Broadcast credits include CNN, ABC’s “Nightline,” NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, “60 Minutes,” Discovery Channel and more. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa and holds a master of arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago.
Richard W. Sandza
(703-750-8619) is managing editor of Army Times. A former Army armor officer, helicopter pilot and public affairs officer, he reported for Gannett’s Westchester-Rockland Newspapers in White Plains, N.Y., and the Wilmington News-Journal in Delaware before spending a decade at Newsweek magazine, covering, among other beats, the Pentagon, CIA, FBI and Justice Department. His assignments included covering the civil wars in Central America and the Falklands War in Argentina. He later owned and operated the Baltimore Guide newspapers in Baltimore before joining Army Times in 2009. He is a graduate of Fordham University and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
Becky Iannotta
(703-750-7439) is managing editor of Air Force Times. She was promoted into the position after serving more than two years as the paper’s news editor.
Iannotta previously held reporting and editing jobs at Space News, Navy Times and the Key West Citizen for most of the past 20 years. She also worked four years directing a congressional district office in Key West, Fla. She is from Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, with a bachelor’s degree in English/journalism.
Andrew deGrandpre
(703-750-8640) is managing editor of Marine Corps Times. He joined Air Force Times in 2005, working a series of editing and reporting jobs before moving to Marine Corps Times as news editor in 2008. He was promoted to managing editor of the newspaper a year later. Prior to joining the company, he was city editor at The Daily News of Jacksonville, N.C., where he covered Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River, and editor of The News of Orange County, near Chapel Hill, N.C. He holds a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Chuck Vinch
(703-750-8688) is managing editor of the Military Times News Service, a position he has held since January 2001. The news service provides “purple suit” coverage to the Military Times family of newspapers and Web sites, reporting on pay and benefits and other key issues affecting U.S. troops, retirees, veterans and their families. In 2010, he also took over responsibility for the OFFDuty section of the newspapers, where he already was writing movie reviews. Prior to joining Military Times, Vinch spent 20 years as a reporter for Stars and Stripes, the military-owned daily newspaper for troops serving overseas. Five of those years were based in Germany and 15 more were based at the Pentagon.
Vago Muradian (703-642-7305) is the editor of Defense News and the host of the weekly TV program, “This Week in Defense News with Vago Muradian.” He returned to Defense News in 2002 after five years serving as managing editor of Defense Daily International and covering business and international affairs for Defense Daily, where he developed a reputation as one of the best-informed defense writers in Washington. He was a reporter with Defense News in the early 1990s, and then moved to Air Force Times, where he reported from Europe, Haiti, Somalia and Zaire. He is a graduate of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
David Brown
(703-642-7312) is managing editor of Defense News. A military journalist since 1998, Brown joined Navy Times in 1999 as a staff writer, covering ships, aircraft, weapons systems and Navy leadership. He moved to Marine Corps Times as news editor in 2004, was promoted to managing editor in 2005, then returned to his roots as managing editor at Navy Times in 2007.
He became managing editor of Defense News in 2012. He has also worked as a reporter at The Daily Messenger in Canandaigua, N.Y., and The Capital in Annapolis, Md. Brown is a graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University.
Steve Watkins (703-750-8657) has been editor of Federal Times since 2000, when he was promoted from a staff writer position. Over the course of his career, he has worked as a reporter in Washington (at Air Force Times, Inside the Pentagon and Inside US Trade) and overseas, in the Philippines, where he worked as a freelance foreign correspondent for a variety of U.S.-based business publications. He holds a B.S. in journalism from Ohio University.
Brad Peniston (703.750.7487) is editor of Armed Forces Journal and executive editor of C4ISR Journal and Training & Simulation Journal. As a reporter for Navy Times and the Capital in Annapolis, Md., he covered the U.S. military in more than a dozen countries and spent time aboard more than 50 warships. He helped found Military.com, creating one of the first online-only newsrooms, and later became managing editor of Defense News. A graduate of Yale University, he is the author of two books: “No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf” and “Around the World with the U.S. Navy.”
Ben Iannotta
(703-750-7486) has been editor of C4ISR Journal since January 2008, when he joined the magazine full-time after a 12-year freelance career in Florida, where he covered defense and technology for C4ISR Journal, Space News, Aerospace America and Air & Space Smithsonian, and general news for Reuters and The Associated Press. He began his career as a news aide at The Washington Post, was associate editor at Inside the Air Force and a staff writer at Space News. He is a graduate of the University of Vermont and holds a master’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University.
