Following an internship with High Country News in 2013, Swearingen became HCN's unofficial archivist and historian when he spent more than a year on an HCN archiving project that involved digitizing the roughly 600 HCN issues published between 1970 and 1994. As an HCN contributor and reader, he continues to appreciate the publication's longevity and its clear reporting on the issues that matter to our changing region.