PBS NewsHour Names Phil Maravilla PBS NewsHour West Senior Producer and Richard Coolidge Senior Managing Producer

Arlington, VA (July 6, 2021) — PBS NewsHour executive producer Sara Just today named Phil Maravilla senior producer of PBS NewsHour West, its bureau at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, which is primarily responsible for covering the Western US and updating the nightly broadcast when news warrants for airings in the West and online. Maravilla – who starts Wednesday, July 7 – replaces Richard Coolidge, who launched NewsHour’s West operation in 2019 and will relocate to Washington in the coming months to serve in the newly created role of senior managing producer. Coolidge will oversee the program’s breaking news specials and other projects as well as play a key leadership role in shaping the nightly broadcast and Washington operation.

“I’m delighted to welcome Phil Maravilla to the NewsHour team, to oversee our important efforts at our West bureau” said Just. “As an accomplished journalist and newsroom leader, Phil is well-poised to further the success of our efforts at ASU in better serving our audiences in the West and online. I’m equally thrilled to welcome Richard Coolidge back to Washington in this newly created role where our nightly broadcast and expanding presence in primetime and with other cross-platform programming will greatly benefit from his unique skillset as a top-notch journalist, field producer and manager.”

Maravilla has served as a freelance producer and journalist since 2018, reporting for CBS News, ABC News, Netflix, Rocky Mountain PBS and Colorado Public Radio, where he has covered coronavirus, racial justice, climate change, elections and the economy. Prior to that, he served two stints as an investigative producer with Rocky Mountain PBS and also as a politics producer for 9News in Denver. He has served as Denver bureau chief for Al Jazeera America from 2013 – 2016 and as a senior producer for HDNet’s World Report from 2009 – 2012. Earlier in his career, he held producer roles for both CBS News, where he relaunched CBS’s Miami bureau, and ABC News, where he reported on the devastation at Ground Zero on 9/11.

Maravilla is an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award recipient for an investigation of Colorado laws that prevent police intervention when a severely mentally ill person has access to guns, as well as an Overseas Press Club David Kaplan Award recipient for reporting on the war in Gaza – shared with NewsHour foreign affairs and defense correspondent Nick Schifrin when they worked together at Al Jazeera America – among other Peabody, Emmy, Murrow, and regional Emmy honors. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Stanford University.

Prior to launching West, Coolidge served as a senior content producer and managed station and partner editorial collaborations for the NewsHour at its Arlington, Virginia headquarters since April 2015. Before joining NewsHour, he spent more than two decades at ABC News where he produced political, national security and foreign affairs content around the country and around the world. He has covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and crises in Pakistan, Yemen and Darfur; and managed field coverage during election years and produced reports from the presidential campaign trail.

Coolidge is the recipient of three Emmy Awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Awards, and an Edward R. Murrow Award. He is a graduate of Middlebury College.

Press Contact: Ella Richardson, erichardson (at) newshour (dot) org