Stephen M. Schewel is an American politician, businessman, and academic. A Democrat, he is the former Mayor of Durham, North Carolina and formerly served on the Durham City Council and as the Vice Chair of the Durham Public School Board. Schewel is also a faculty member at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy and a former faculty member at North Carolina Central University. He founded the weekly newspaper Indy Week in 1983, and served as its president until he sold the paper in 2012. In 2010 he co-founded the Hopscotch Music Festival.

Indy Week, formerly known as the Independent Weekly and originally the North Carolina Independent, is a tabloid-format alternative weekly newspaper published in Durham, North Carolina, United States, and distributed throughout the Research Triangle area and counties. Its first issue was published in April 1983.