This is a candidate for the 2025-26 ONA Board of Directors election.
Leigh Munsil is the editor in chief of the nonprofit San Antonio Report.
Munsil has held staff writer, reporter and editor positions with The Dallas Morning News, POLITICO, The Blaze and CNN Politics, where she was the editor of CNN’s The Point with Chris Cillizza in Washington.
Munsil holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication from Arizona State University, where she also studied Spanish and served as editor in chief of the university’s daily newspaper, The State Press, which was selected in 2010 as an Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker finalist for best four-year daily newspaper during her tenure.
She is also a 2024 Poynter Media Transformation Challenge fellow.
Leigh’s vision for the future of digital journalism
The future of digital journalism will be tailored to communities. Each community has unique news and information needs, and local newsrooms need to be positioning themselves to serve those needs as best as they can, making their coverage absolutely essential to living and thriving in U.S. communities.
The mechanisms for distribution have changed and will continue to change, but the need for reliable, thoughtful journalism will remain. As an industry, it is our job to stay ahead of the curve and consider audience in every decision we make. If our financial success as news organizations leaves our communities behind, we have failed.
I am passionate about building the future of local news, and using those learnings to strengthen news coverage wherever people gather — whether in our neighborhoods, around specialty interests or even national politics.
Great stories bring people together. It’s not too much to ask of digital news for that to be our purpose.