Danielle Belton is the former Editor-in-Chief of HuffPost, a Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization that publishes original, digital-first reporting on politics, lifestyle, entertainment, and more. When her hiring was announced in 2021, it was called a “landmark event” in an article by Digiday, with past staffers praising her empathy and voice.

In her first year, Axios reported that HuffPost was profitable. Since then, HuffPost has been profitable for three years, breaking numerous traffic records, reaching 560 million cross-platform page views in September 2024. At HuffPost, Belton improved overall newsroom diversity and relaunched HuffPost Voices as a multiethnic, intersectional vertical celebrating the lives and cultures of people of color, women, and queer folk. And in 2022, HuffPost created Indigenous Voices, one of the first verticals by a mainstream publication for Indigenous peoples in the United States. In January 2025, Belton stepped away from her role at HuffPost to save jobs after the newsroom faced severe layoffs due to industry headwinds.

She is currently writing a humorous memoir based on her experience as a journalist living with bipolar disorder. She was diagnosed in 2007 while working as a staff writer for The Bakersfield Californian, overcoming multiple hospitalizations. After finding treatment that worked, she would start the award-winning pop culture and politics blog, The Black Snob, in 2007. Her penchant for humor and parody led to her becoming the first Black woman to lead a writer’s room in late-night television in 2012 when she was named head writer of the TV show “Don’t Sleep” on BET Networks. Belton was previously the “beloved” and award-winning Editor-in-Chief of The Root, where she grew the Black interest news site from 3 million unique visitors per month to more than 12 million in her first year as the site’s lead editor.

In her six-year tenure, The Root broke many personal records, including reaching an all-time-high 20.9 million unique monthly visitors in January 2019.

Belton briefed National Press Foundation fellows in November 2025: The Cost of Bearing Witness: Mental Health, Trauma, and the Weight Journalists Carry.