In 2017, a multimedia series Schuerman oversaw in conjunction with other nonprofit partners, The Harlem Heat Project, won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Innovation from the RTNDA. A week-long collaboration Schuerman undertook with CityLimits.org in 2015, The Cost of Our Water, won a second-place Headliner Award from the Atlantic City Press Club in the radio documentary category. He co-produced a two-part story on construction worker deaths with Cindy Rodriguez in 2008 that won a a Best Enterprise Reporting prize from Public Radio News Directors Inc. Schuerman has also contributed to other public radio shows, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace and Reveal.

He is also the author of the forthcoming Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents (University of Chicago Press, November 2019), a chronicle of gentrification in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. An article he wrote on the de-industrialization of New York City was included in the 2007 book, The Suburbanization of New York: Is the World's Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town? (Princeton Architectural Press). 

Schuerman came to radio from The New York Observer, where he covered economic development. Earlier, he was an associate editor at Worth Magazine, and freelanced for The Village Voice, Fortune, City Limits, and other publications. He began his journalism career at The Day, a daily in New London, Connecticut, covering town news, schools and higher education.

A native of Chicago, Schuerman graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude. He received a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.