Nora Lopez is Executive Editor at the San Antonio Express-News. Prior to that, she was the Metro Editor, a position she held for eight years at the same newspaper where she began her professional journalism career as an intern. A 35-year news veteran, Lopez oversees a team of talented editors and award-winning reporters who produce content for both print and digital publications. In between her stints at the Express-News, first in 1987 and again in 2000, Lopez worked as a reporter at The Dallas Morning News and the now defunct San Antonio Light. After transitioning from reporter to editor, directing criminal justice coverage at the Express-News, Lopez rose through the newspaper’s ranks. She served as State Editor, overseeing half a dozen bureaus in Mexico, the Texas-Mexico Border, the state capitol and Washington, D.C., before being promoted to Deputy Metro Editor.
Lopez is the president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She has long been active with both the San Antonio Association of Hispanic Journalists, serving as its president from 2019-2020, and the San Antonio Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, serving as its vice president for programming and as a producer of the group’s annual scholarship fundraiser, the Gridiron show. She has helped raise more than $100,000 in scholarships to support journalism students through her work with both SAAHJ and SPJ-SA and sought to help local area college students build their portfolios by giving them their first shot at work with weekend general assignments.
The daughter of migrant farmworkers, Lopez was born in Mexico and immigrated to the U.S. as a child. She became a U.S. citizen in 2008. She grew up in Edinburg, Texas, about 30 miles from the Texas-Mexico border, and home to Pan American University, now the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where Lopez graduated with a BA in communications.