Christina Bellantoni is a professor of professional practice, the director of USC Annenberg’s Media Center and the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy faculty fellow.

Bellantoni is a digital strategy consultant with the Outlook News Group based in La Cañada. She served as a contributing editor at The 19th News, a nonprofit newsroom, in 2021. 

Bellantoni joined USC Annenberg in 2018 after serving as a member of the masthead at the Los Angeles Times. 

Over her more than 20 years in journalism, Bellantoni has worked as a reporter and editor, as a producer and as an analyst on national television. She has covered local, state and federal government, along with four presidential campaigns and the White House. 

At the Times, Bellantoni was an assistant managing editor focused on politics. Under her leadership, the California politics team earned statewide recognition for innovative coverage of politics. Her work brought more transparency to California’s state capital.

She joined the newspaper after spending 12 years as a journalist in Washington, D.C., serving as editor-in-chief of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call until moving to Los Angeles in 2015.

Before Roll Call, Bellantoni was the political editor and an on-air analyst at the PBS NewsHour. She oversaw political coverage.

Bellantoni began her stint in Washington in 2003 as a Metro reporter at the Washington Times and became a senior reporter for Talking Points Memo in 2009.

Before moving to D.C., she worked at three newspapers in the Bay Area. 

Bellantoni was a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics in 2011, and is a former vice president of the Washington Press Club Foundation.

She frequently appears on television and radio, including NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher. Find highlights from her reel here.

Awards and Honors:

Pulitzer Prize/Breaking News (team award) (2015)
1st Place from Maryland Delaware DC Press Association (2014)
National breaking news award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (2000)