Leroy Chapman Jr. is managing editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he directs the newspaper’s daily print and digital news gathering.

Reporting teams that cover local, state and federal government, politics, education, crime and public safety, the economy, sports and breaking news report to him.

Prior to his promotion to managing editor, Leroy served as deputy managing editor where he was in charge of breaking news and the newspaper’s core local reporting teams. He also managed the shared content and reporting partnership between WSB-TV and WSB Radio for the AJC. He has held a variety of editing and leadership roles at the AJC since his arrival in 2011.

Under his leadership, AJC reporting teams have won local, regional and national journalism awards for local news, business, education and politics coverage.

Leroy has led the newsroom’s efforts to capture the biggest news moments over the past decade. Among those were the AJC’s coverage of the trials of educators charged in the Atlanta Public Schools test cheating case, the 2014 snowstorm that paralyzed the city (he slept under his desk), the fire that caused an Interstate 85 bridge to collapse and Georgia elections over the past decade that have turned the metro Atlanta suburbs blue and transformed the state into a true swing state.

In moments when the world is watching Georgia, Leroy has led the AJC in planning and executing its coverage, whether it’s hosting a Super Bowl, holding U.S. Senate races that determine the balance of power in Washington, D.C. or scrambling to manage a power outage at the Atlanta airport that disrupts global travel.Over the years Leroy has put the AJC on the frontlines of some of the biggest breaking news nationally: protests in Ferguson, Missouri; a mass shooting in Orlando, Florida; a racist attack on Black church parishioners in Charleston; police officers gunned down in Dallas.

As the newspaper has followed reader preferences for urgency, digital engagement and audio reporting, Leroy has been among the newsroom leaders who transformed the AJC into a more efficient, digitally focused breaking news and digital operation. He has built reporting teams to deliver around-the-clock breaking news, timely enterprise on emerging topics and hyperlocal news. He was also a key leader in developing two of the AJC’s most widely downloaded podcasts, “Breakdown” and “Politically Georgia.”

Prior to his arrival at the AJC in 2011, Leroy was the governance editor at The (Columbia, S.C.) State where he was in charge of the newspaper’s politics coverage. He managed the 2008 coverage of candidate Barack Obama’s rise to the Democratic presidential nomination in early voting in South Carolina and coverage of candidate Nikki Haley, who made history as the nation’s first woman of color to be elected governor. Leroy was in charge of the team that broke the story that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s mysterious disappearance to Argentina was tied to an ongoing extra-martial affair.

In his early career, Leroy worked as an award-winning columnist and editorial writer, a business reporter and college sports reporter.

In 1999, at age 28, he became the first African American in The Greenville (S.C.) News’ 126-year history to join its opinion writing staff. He has covered each presidential election since 2000 and built a successful political blog, S.C. Politics Today, in the early days of digital media.

Leroy is a native South Carolinian, born and raised in Greenville. After high school, Leroy enlisted in the U.S. Navy to attend BOOST (Broadened Opportunity for Officer and Selection and Training), a Navy prep-school for officer candidates and candidates for the U.S. Naval Academy. After his discharge from the Navy, Leroy attended the University of South Carolina where he majored in English.

Leroy is married to Dawn Ford Chapman. They met at a high school football game in 1988, attended prom together the following spring and married in 1996 after college.

They have three adult children and live in Gwinnett County. Their oldest child is a relative who they took in when he was 13.

Leroy is a Leadership Gwinnett alum and he serves on the board of VOX Atl, an Atlanta nonprofit that supports teens produce journalism. He is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.