Tony Ortega

Anthony "Tony" Ortega is an American journalist and editor who is best known for his coverage of the Church of Scientology and his blog The Underground Bunker. He was executive editor of Raw Story from 2013 until 2015. Previously, he had been a journalist at the New Times LA, the editor-in-chief of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times from 2005 to 2007, and the editor-in-chief of The Village Voice from 2007 to 2012. In 2015, he was executive editor of the YouTube channel TheLipTV. He is author of the non-fiction book The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, about journalist Paulette Cooper and the Church of Scientology's attempts to silence her after her own book was published.

Tony Ortega was raised in Anaheim, California. He received the John Jay Scholarship to attend Columbia University, where he completed three semesters before continuing his studies at California State University, Fullerton, where he obtained his B.A. and M.A. in English. Ortega pursued more graduate work at UC Santa Cruz prior to landing his first journalism job as a freelancer at the Phoenix New Times in 1995. In 1996, Ortega reported on alleged corruption in the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, writing a series of stories concerning "misuse of state funds, poor morale inside the department, the high cost of the sheriff's posses and evidence of abuse of jail inmates," for which he was nominated for the Arizona Press Club's Virg Hill Award in 1997.

As a graduate student at the University of California, Ortega researched the California Agricultural Strike 1933 under the tutelage of Louis Owens. He later wrote an article about his research in the Village Voice. In her review of Ortega's article, Carolyn Kellogg wrote, "When Ortega gets his grandfather and great half-uncle to tell him stories of the strike, it's exactly the first-person narrative he'd been hoping for. But I found, reading the stories in his article, that they were simply personal anecdotes—interesting anecdotes, sure, but simple anecdotes. The men camped under eucalyptus trees. They played clarinet and violin for the strikers."

Tony's father, also named Tony Ortega (1938–2019), was a musician, guitarist, and songwriter, starting in the late 1950s and throughout his life. He also had a career in the steel industry, joining at the entry level and rising through the ranks to become a general manager.

Ortega spent nearly seventeen years working for various alternative weekly newspapers in the Voice Media Group (VMG). He has worked at the Phoenix New Times, the New Times LA and The Pitch. His earliest positions ranged from staff writer to assistant editor and managing editor. In 2001, Ortega spent time with and profiled detective and conspiracy theorist William Dear for the New Times LA newspaper after Dear spent several years constructing a case around Jason Simpson (son of O.J Simpson) in the O. J. Simpson murder case. Ortega was highly critical of his methods, in particular spending two weeks impersonating a doctor in an attempt to access Jason Simpson's medical records.

He became the editor-in-chief at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times in 2005 and then at The Village Voice in 2007. He was executive editor at online news website Raw Story from 2013 to 2015.

Tony Ortega has been covering Scientology for over 20 years and, according to the Phoenix New Times, "has become one of the foremost reporters on the Scientology beat".

Ortega first reported on Scientology in 1995 while working at the Phoenix New Times. after he came across a Letter to the editor from Rick Alan Ross who complained that a story published in The Arizona Republic about Ross's loss of a lawsuit against him left out the fact that the plaintiff was actually hired by the Church of Scientology to sue Ross, which also caused harm to his Cult Awareness Network. Ortega continued covering the subject of Scientology throughout his career under various media outlets in the Voice Media Group. In September 2012, Ortega publicly announced his resignation from The Village Voice in a post to the Voice's "Runnin' Scared" blog.