Victor Merina is a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg institute for Justice and Journalism and program coordinator for the M.A. program in specialized journalism. A former Los Angeles Times reporter,  he covered local government and politics, transportation, law enforcement, and urban affairs, among other issues.

As an investigative reporter, he was a member of the paper's projects team and was part of the group of reporters named as finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for a week-long series on homicides in Los Angeles County. He also shared in the paper’s 1993 Pulitzer for spot news coverage of the L.A. Riots and has contributed essays to the Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion and Magazine sections.

Merina currently is an editor for reznetnews.com, a Web site featuring stories about Native American issues, and has taught at the American Indian Journalism Institute in South Dakota and organized a “Covering Indian Country” seminar for the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. A former fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Merina has conducted newsroom training for the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in South Africa and the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute in Nashville. He was a two-year teaching fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a Media Studies Center fellow in New York City.