About Salena Zito

Salena Zito

Salena Zito

Salena Zito joined the Washington Examiner in 2016 as a Western Pennsylvania-based columnist and reporter covering national politics and culture. She is also a weekly columnist at the New York Post, contributes to The Wall Street Journal and co-authored “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics” with Brad Todd. In 2018, she won first place for her columns in the Associated Press for her coverage of American politics, and she also won the Barbara Olson award for excellence and independence in journalism.

She has taught journalism at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Washington and Lee University, and Hillsdale College.

She has interviewed every president, vice president and candidate who sought their party’s nomination on both sides of the aisle in the 21st century.

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More Than a Machine: Big Boy No. 4014 Sparks a Nationwide Reunion Jul 14, 2026

ALTOONA, Pennsylvania — In Virginia Lee Burton's classic 1939 children's book "Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel," Mulligan often boasted that his steam shovel, Mary Anne, "could dig as much in a day as a hundred men could dig in a week, but h... Read More

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How Mike Rowe's 'Build Freedom' Aims to Restore the Dignity of American Work Jul 07, 2026

If you stand on the banks of the Monongahela River just south of Pittsburgh, you can still hear the echoes of an America that used to build things. It is a quiet testament to a bygone era, the kind of place where the skeletal remains of old factories... Read More

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Appalachian Awakening: Rewriting American Music Culture Jun 30, 2026

AVERY COUNTY, North Carolina — If there is such a thing as the classic Appalachian success story, the rise in popularity of the outside-the-box band Cigarettes @ Sunset would be that story. But nothing comes easy in Appalachia. The five-member... Read More

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Ghost of Alexis de Tocqueville Returns -- What America Can Learn From Him Jun 23, 2026

LUZERNE COUNTY, Pennsylvania — Over the Flag Day weekend in Pennsylvania, crowds gathered, and communities were formed in the most unlikely of places, under viaducts, along gravel-filled tracks and at the base of some impressive Appalachian mou... Read More