On Dec. 7, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Brittny Mejia was recognized by the CCNMA Latino Journalists of California as one of the Most Influential Latinas in California. The awards were presented at a ceremony at Loews Hollywood Hotel.
The organization’s mission is to foster an accurate and fair portrayal of Latinos in the news, and to promote the social, economic and professional advancement of Latino journalists.
Mejia, a Metro reporter who covers federal courts for The Times, joined the newspaper in 2014 and has written numerous narrative pieces with a heavy emphasis on the Latino community and others that make up the diversity of California.
In 2021, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in local reporting for her investigation alongside Staff Writer Jack Dolan that exposed failures in L.A. County’s safety-net healthcare system that resulted in months-long wait times for patients, including some who died before getting appointments with specialists.
In an acceptance speech, Mejia thanked Managing Editor Hector Becerra, who was her first editor at The Times, noting it was “huge” to “have a Mexican American like me who could edit me and who understood the stories I wanted to tell in the Latino community.” That support continues, she said, with her current editor, Maria L. La Ganga, deputy managing editor for California and Metro.
“I love being able to tell stories about the Latino community and to be able to represent,” Mejia added.
CCNMA’s annual list of the Most Influential Latinas in Journalism is based on three criteria: the quality of work, the size and importance of the journalist’s reach and the arc of the journalist’s career.
To learn more about CCNMA and its awards, visit ccnma.org.
