IVOH Thought Leader: Victor Merina

Victor Merina is the senior correspondent and special projects editor for reznet, a Web site that focuses on Native American issues and indigenous people. He also is a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism who has lectured and spoken at workshops from South Dakota to South Africa and at venues from Indiana to Indonesia.

A former Los Angeles Times investigative reporter, Victor was a member of the paper's projects team and among the reporters named as finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for a weeklong series on homicides in Los Angeles County. He 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 and the San Francisco Chronicle. His work covering the 2008 presidential campaign for reznet was also cited as a finalist for an Online News Association award.

A former fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Victor was a keynote speaker last year for the International Media Dialogues in Bali, Indonesia and a panelist and instructor this year at the Nieman Conference for Narrative Journalism. He 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.

Victor has a BA in political science from UCLA and an MS degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Victor's recent work and related links: