Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture Journal
Editor
Laura Castañeda
Professor
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
University of Southern California
Laura Castañeda has been a staff writer, editor and columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, and The Associated Press in San Francisco, New York and Mexico. Her freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, TheAtlantic.com, and Columbia Journalism Review magazine, among others.
Castañeda is the co-editor of News and Sexuality: Media Portraits of Diversity, which was published by Sage Publications in October 2005.
She is the co-author of The Latino Guide to Personal Money Management, which was published by Bloomberg Press in May 1999, and was released in Spanish by Seven Stories Press in 2001.
She earned undergraduate degrees in journalism and international affairs from USC, and a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a doctorate from the USC Rossier School of Education. She also was awarded a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in business and economics reporting from Columbia’s School of Journalism.
Castañeda served as associate director and assistant director of the School of Journalism between 2010-2014. She is currently the academic at-large officer for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ).
She is a 2017 graduate of the AEJMC’s Institute for Diverse Leaders program. She was selected for the ad hoc membership committee for AEJMC’s Committee on the Status of Women in 2017. She also was named a 2017 “Disruptive Educator” by CUNY’s Tow-Knight Center.
Castañeda was named one of the nation’s 10 journalism educators who is “making a difference” by Crain's NewsPro magazine in January 2018.
Castañeda was awarded the 2019 Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship by the American Society of News Editors in recognition of an educator's outstanding efforts to encourage students of color in the field of journalism.
In 2002, Castañeda was awarded the Association for Journalism and Mass Communication’s 2002 Baskett Mosse Award for Faculty Development.