Professor of Professional Practice- USC

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.

She also is a contributing editor with the independent nonprofit newsroom The 19th News, which focuses on gender, politics and policy.

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, behind the camera as a producer and in front 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 Los Angeles Times, Bellantoni was an assistant managing editor focused on politics. Under her leadership, the California politics team expanded and earned statewide recognition for innovative coverage of politics and for hard-hitting sexual harassment investigations that prompted two Assembly resignations and brought more transparency to California’s state capital.

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

Before taking over Roll Call, Bellantoni was the political editor and an on-air analyst at the PBS NewsHour. She oversaw presidential campaign, congressional, White House and Supreme Court coverage.

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

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.