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Over the past 8 years, Jeff Schogol has been a steadfast and reliable teammate, a trusted voice for our audience, and the heart of Task & Purpose. Today is his last day, and as he leaves, we want to take a moment to reflect on his incredible contributions and the impact his work has had.

Jeff’s byline has come to define how we strive to tell stories at T&P. There is a person at the center of every one, and the stakes for rank-and-file service members, or veterans, are plain as day.

Jeff has broken huge national stories, like the scapegoating of an aircraft carrier captain during the COVID-19 pandemic, which came together after a successful lawsuit against the Navy for a trove of internal emails that rebuffed the official narrative,

and his reporting on systemic failures in an Army airborne unit that led to a fatal mishap. Those stories were about accountability, but told through the eyes of service members.

Even his final story for T&P, published just this morning, about the punishment a sailor might face for jumping overboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, shows how Jeff has always found a way to make everyday servicemen and women the center of the military’s biggest national news stories.

Behind the scenes, Jeff is, was, and will surely continue to be a constant mentor wherever he goes next: freely handing off notes and introducing junior reporters to expert sources; providing insight and fair warnings from his decades of experience across a range of publications;

and regularly jumping in to pick up breaking news stories regardless of the hour or day of the week. And never one to pass up more work, on top of all the daily news coverage, lengthy investigations, and briefings,

Jeff found time to stand up and oversee our Pentagon Rundown newsletter and column series, which combined his dry wit and expert analysis as he offered his observations on the comings and goings of the five-sided funhouse once a week.