USA TODAY’s Editorial Board, which forms the opinions expressed in USA TODAY’s editorials, is the staff of the opinion section. Its members are selected by USA TODAY’s editorial page editor with a goal of reflecting the diversity of the nation’s conversation. The board operates by consensus and reaches its opinions independently from any other part of USA TODAY or its parent company, Gannett. It is not aligned with either political party. More broadly, the Editorial Board strives to present an opinion section online and in print that reflects the fullness of the national dialogue, offering commentary from columnists, readers and its own writers on a wide range of issues from many perspectives.
Bill Sternberg
Bill Sternberg became editorial page editor in 2015, after serving as deputy editorial page editor since 2004. Previously, as senior assignment editor and Washington editor, Sternberg planned and executed coverage of the Clinton impeachment scandal, the 2000 election and recount, the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before joining USA TODAY in 1997, he was Washington bureau chief for Thomson Newspapers and a reporter for The (Syracuse) Post-Standard and Crain’s New York Business. He is the co-author of “Feeding Frenzy: The Inside Story of Wedtech” (Holt: 1988), and his prizes include the John Hancock Award for Excellence in Business and Financial Journalism (“Cooked Books,” The Atlantic Monthly, 1992) and Best of USA TODAY Network Journalism Award (“The Opioid Crisis Hits Home,” 2018). He was born in Brooklyn, New York, grew up in Guilderland, New York, and graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. degree in American Studies.
David Mastio
David Mastio became deputy editorial page editor in 2015, after rejoining USA TODAY as forum editor in 2012. Previously, he was a USA TODAY editorial writer and assistant forum editor first hired by the newspaper in 1995. In his years away from USA TODAY, he was founding editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner, deputy editorial page editor and senior editor for online opinion at The Washington Times, an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot and a Washington correspondent for The Detroit News. Outside of newspapers, he was a speechwriter for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and founded BlogNetNews.com, which tracked the best state and local news-focused blogs in all 50 states. He was born in Mons, Belgium, and has lived in eight states from California to Virginia. He’s a 1995 graduate of the University of Iowa journalism school.
Jill Lawrence
Jill Lawrence has been commentary editor of USA TODAY since 2016. A former columnist for Creators Syndicate, U.S. News and World Report and The Associated Press, she has won National Press Club, Sigma Delta Chi and National Headliner awards for her writing. Lawrence is the author of the 2017 book “The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock,” and co-author of a Brookings Institution study of the 2014 House primaries and an Eagleton Institute of Politics study of governors and the presidency. Her positions have included managing editor for politics at National Journal; senior correspondent at Politics Daily; national political correspondent at USA TODAY; and national political writer for the AP. Her work has also appeared online in Politico Magazine, The Week, The Daily Beast and The Atlantic. Lawrence has a master’s degree in journalism from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in music literature from the University of Michigan.
Kelsey Bloom
Kelsey Bloom has been the voices editor of USA TODAY since 2018. She solicits and edits first-person opinion columns and narratives that have a broader national appeal. Previously, she was an associate opinion editor at The Hill, a political reporter for the Independent Journal Review and a 2014 Collegiate Network fellow with USA TODAY’s Editorial Board. Bloom is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied economics and political science. As a student, she was editor of the magazine Carolina Review and interned for The Washington Examiner and The (Raleigh) News & Observer. Bloom grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and now lives in Arlington, Virginia.
Dan Carney
Dan Carney has been an editorial writer since 2003. He writes on a range of topics, principally those related to national politics, economics, business, taxation and federal spending. Before joining USA TODAY, he was a Washington correspondent for BusinessWeek. He has also been a Washington-based reporter for Congressional Quarterly, the Houston Post and States News Service. He started his journalism career in North Carolina at The Fayetteville Observer. He is a graduate of Reed College and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer assigned to Benin in West Africa. He was born in Dallas and now lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Thuan Le Elston
Thuan Le Elston has been Opinion operations editor since 2005. Her responsibilities include page layout, copy editing, and print and online publishing. She also writes editorials, opinion columns, poetry and fiction. Previously, she was a news copy editor for The Salt Lake Tribune and USA TODAY, and a news reporter for the Greenwich (Connecticut) Time and the Los Angeles Times. She was born in South Vietnam and left a week before Saigon fell in 1975. She received a B.A. in journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. One of her few non-journalism jobs was a speaking role in Oliver Stone’s movie “Heaven and Earth.” She’s married with four children.
Eileen Rivers
Eileen Rivers has been the digital content editor since 2008. She started and edits the USA TODAY vertical Policing the USA, and her series on recidivism for the site won an Emmy in 2018. Before joining USA TODAY, she was a copy editor for The Washington Post’s Metro section and also wrote for The Post’s Real Estate, Metro, Style and Arts sections for eight years. Before that, she was a reporter for The Augusta (Georgia) Focus, where she won a Phoenix award for investigative journalism for a series on the experiences of the first female firefighters admitted to the Augusta/Richmond County Fire Department. Before entering journalism, she was an Arabic and Spanish linguist in the U.S. Army; studied Arabic at the Army’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California; and lived and worked in Kuwait, Ecuador and Honduras. She was born in Aberdeen, Maryland; raised in Severn, Maryland; and graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A. degree in journalism and a minor in linguistics. She recently published the book “Beyond the Call,” about women who served on the front lines in Afghanistan.
Mike Thompson
Mike Thompson is the editorial cartoonist/animator for USA TODAY and the Detroit Free Press. A four-time Pulitzer finalist, Thompson is winner of the 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and is also a two-time winner of the Society of Professional Journalists’ national award for cartooning. His other awards include the Overseas Press Club, the National Press Foundation, the National Headliner, the Scripps Howard and the Association for Women in Communications’ Clarion. Thompson began his career as a contributing cartoonist for The Milwaukee Journal and later worked as staff cartoonist for the St. Louis Sun and the Copley Illinois newspapers before joining the Detroit Free Press in 1998. He resides in suburban Detroit with his wife and their two daughters.
Gregg Zoroya
Gregg Zoroya became an editorial writer in 2016. He writes about the environment, military and foreign policy, and world affairs. He was a graduate of the University of Kentucky School of Journalism before working for newspapers in California, the last of which was the Orange County Register. Zoroya joined USA TODAY in 1998 and in 2001 was sent to cover the war in Afghanistan. He wrote from Jerusalem about the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada in 2002, embedded with U.S. forces during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan more than a dozen times, writing largely about the impact of war on troops and their families. He is the author of the nonfiction book “The Chosen Few: A Company of Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of Afghanistan” (Da Capo: 2017).
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USA TODAY EDITORIAL BOARD: Who we are