I create stories that move people and drive change.

Holly McCall is editor-in-chief of the Tennessee Lookout, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet dedicated to covering Tennessee state government, politics and policy and an award-winning columnist. She has been a fixture in Tennessee media and politics for decades.

As a newspaper reporter, McCall covered municipal government for papers in Ohio, Missouri, and Tennessee and edited The Contributor, a publication focusing on social justice issues and sold by members of Nashville’s homeless community. She has written for the Nashville Scene and the Nashville Post, covering technology for the latter.

Her lifelong interest in politics was spurred by her mother, Patricia McCall, who served six terms as a member of the Franklin (Tenn.) Special Schools District Board in the 1970s and 1980s, and McCall took her first political job as a Tennessee legislative page in 1980. She has served in communications roles for, among others, the presidential primary campaigns of Hillary Clinton (2016) and Michael Bloomberg (2020) and in the administration of Nashville Mayor Karl Dean.

McCall has served as Chair of Emerge Tennessee, the premier organization for training and recruiting Democratic women to run for office and on the board of Women in Numbers (WIN), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to women in public office. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

The Tennessee Press Association awarded her first place for Best Single Editorial in 2024 and she has been named Best Columnist in the Nashville Scene’s Best of Nashville for 2021, 2022 and 2023. The Nashville Post named her to its “In Charge” list in 2023 and 2024.

McCall serves as a political analyst for Fox 17 in Nashville and regularly lectures across Tennessee on the role of watchdog journalism in educating the public about state policies affecting their everyday life.

She studied political science and journalism at the University of Tennessee and has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, as well as holding a certificate in Social Justice from Harvard University.

McCall, her husband, Tom Bitto, and two dogs live in Franklin, Tenn. as the fourth generation in the house her great-grandfather bought in 1890.