The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Rob Curley

Rob Curley

Current Position: Executive Editor

Rob Curley is the executive editor of The Spokesman-Review and joined the newspaper in 2016. He has previously held leadership positions at The Orange County Register, Las Vegas Sun, Washington Post and Lawrence Journal-World. His work in newsrooms, dating back to the 1990s, resulted in some of the largest and most award-winning news sites on the internet, but local journalism and community engagement have always been the main focal points of Curley’s work. He has started several, large-scale community initiatives through the newspaper — including the Northwest Passages events series and the largest, paid high school newspaper internship program in the country. During his time, the newspaper has become a national leader in philanthropic-funded journalism and the use of Creative Commons. This alternate funding has allowed The Spokesman-Review to become the smallest newspaper in the nation to have a bureau in the nation’s capital, to continue to have a bureau in Olympia, WA., covering statewide issues and politics, and — with one of the nation’s largest Ukrainian populations in the nation — The Spokesman-Review was one of the smallest news organizations in the world to send a reporter to Ukraine to cover the war with Russia through the eyes of its own community. In 2023, the news nonprofit Curley founded -- the Comma community journalism lab -- received its 501c3 status from the Internal Revenue Service, and helped relaunch the region's Black newspaper, The Black Lens.

Email
robc@spokesman.com
Phone
(509) 459-5590

All Stories

Opinion >  Column

Rob Curley: Open hearts, wallets – it’s our kind of day

So many days in a row with nicknames: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Robbi’s Tired Sunday and Cyber Monday. Then there’s today: Giving Tuesday. It might be the one that impacts a community the most. And for the longest. These are the kinds of presents that keep on giving.
Opinion >  Column

Rob Curley: What does a woman who plays a Disney princess several times a week think about ‘Frozen II’?

Most people know Ashlee Karras as Miss Spokane. She’s the crowned ambassador for our city. She’s so good at it that she’s won numerous pageants and even been named Miss Spokane twice. But others know her by another name: Elsa. Yep, that Elsa – the one with the long, braided white hair and an incredible ability to break into an overly catchy tune at any moment. Karras even has the big-time singing voice to legitimately pull off the songs.
Opinion >  Column

Rob Curley: Kindred spirits of community kindness and a transformational kitchen

Christ Kitchen teaches practical job skills to women in poverty. One of the job programs it’s been working for a couple of years to fund aims to teach these women how to become baristas. A special moment, aided by a big grant from Bank of America, allowed that very thing to happen. Spokesman-Review editor Rob Curley explains how it all happened...
News >  Spokane

Rob Curley: Family is more than a slogan for Zags, and Quentin Hall event will prove it

They get together more than most realize. And not just those who shared a locker room while playing on the same team. Since the mid-1990s, and definitely after Casey Calvary’s legendary tip-in against Florida in 1999 that led to the program’s first-ever Elite Eight, if you’ve pulled on that jersey with the name most national broadcasters mispronounce and spent a little too much time at Jack and Dan’s, you’re family. It’s a cross-generational, court-crossing tie with a very special basketball bind.
News >  Spokane

Rob Curley: Hearing the candidates one more time before you vote, only this time with a little more discussion and a little less debate

There have been so many dang debates in Spokane this election season that it’s hard to tell whose heads are swimming the most: the candidates’, the voters’ or the journalists’. I can’t remember if it was Steven Tyler or Ayn Rand who said that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, but judging from my phone’s musical library, a solid guess is Aerosmith. Of course, Shakespeare noted it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Or maybe that was Bon Jovi. It doesn’t really matter.
Opinion >  Column

Rob Curley: Author Tom Mueller, who has Spokane roots, explains America’s ‘Crisis of Conscience’

Sometimes things are just meant to be. Like when you work for seven years researching and writing a book that takes a massive deep dive into the complicated and often misunderstood world of whistleblowers only to have one of the largest and most important whistleblower cases in our country’s history begin at almost exactly the same time your book is to be released. That’s exactly what happened to Tom Mueller.
News >  Spokane

Rob Curley: Subscribing in space

The customer call that came one day last December was different than any other. A longtime resident wanted daily delivery of The Spokesman-Review. At the International Space Station.