After 5 amazing years, The Ledger’s managing editor, Cristina Bolling, is leaving
Bolling wraps up 5 years at The Ledger and 25 years in local news
The following article appeared in the May 30, 2025, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
Cristina came aboard as the Covid pandemic was setting in and helped The Ledger become a strong local media company; now she’s leaving for a new industry
From Ledger editor Tony Mecia:
Well, it seems like staff announcement week at The Ledger, and today we have another change to tell you about: Managing editor Cristina Bolling is leaving to take a new job outside of journalism.
In March of 2020, as Covid started shutting everything down, I reached out to Cristina. We had been friends since 2000, when we worked together at The Charlotte Observer’s Gaston County office.
In 2020, The Ledger was in its infancy, barely a year old. I was looking for help building it.
At the time, it was pretty much just me, a couple of occasional freelance writers and a college intern who worked a few hours a week. The Ledger had almost no money, but we had a growing list of readers — about 3,500 people who had signed up to receive my emails.
Somehow, I persuaded Cristina to leave her longtime job of two decades to join me in an important effort to revive and reinvent local journalism in Charlotte. Despite my underpaying her, she jumped at the opportunity — the chance to help build something enduring and respected that filled emerging gaps in local news.
And for the last five years, that’s exactly what Cristina and I did together, as we built a strong team. We hired talented local writers, co-hosted an annual awards celebration for unsung Charlotte heroes aged 40+, brainstormed ideas on how to make our shared vision work. And we reported and wrote, a lot, on literally hundreds of different topics, some serious, some less so.
Cristina revealed the financial struggles of the east Charlotte retirement community Aldersgate, exposed allegations of elder abuse in Steele Creek and gave readers the scoop on new school boundary lines and accreditation changes at Charlotte Catholic. She also wrote about teens throwing cheese on parked cars, the run on feta cheese because of a viral TikTok recipe and — in a 2023 piece that remains The Ledger’s most viewed article of all time after being mentioned in The New York Times — a developer who named streets and apartment complexes after “Seinfeld” references. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
As anyone who has run a small business can attest, it is hard work. There are long hours and often late nights and early mornings. In media, the deadlines are constant and unrelenting. Cristina gave it everything she had, and then some, and almost always with a can-do attitude and a smile.
Together, we succeeded. Just this week, we brought on our fourth full-timer, Ava Mikeal, to join the two of us and reporter Lindsey Banks, who has been with us for three years (and who views Cristina as a mentor). We now have 27,000+ readers, including nearly 5,000 paying subscribers, plus a growing roster of sponsors and supporters throughout Charlotte.
Now, though, Cristina, the co-architect of The Ledger’s success over the last five years, is relishing a new challenge. Our team is sad that she is leaving, though we can’t fault her for wanting to try something different after nearly three decades in journalism.
Her next step will be totally different, in a different industry, but using many of the talents she honed in the last 25 years in Charlotte. She’s joining Novant Health as a writer and editor. The Ledger sometimes covers Novant Health, but Cristina has had no involvement in any recent healthcare coverage, and I can say with confidence that our local hospital systems don’t believe The Ledger goes easy on them.
Cristina said I could share this statement from her:
I could not be more grateful for the five years I’ve spent at The Ledger, and there are so many people to thank for making my time what it was: the readers who spent their precious time reading my work, the sources who put their trust in me to tell their stories, and most of all Tony Mecia, Lindsey Banks and the entire Ledger team whom I was humbled to walk alongside as we built a small but mighty local news media empire.
It’s been a privilege to bear witness to so many aspects of Charlotte life, and to communicate them to you, our readers.
Reporting the news is hard, mission-driven work, and while my career is pulling me in a new direction, I’ll never stop rooting for The Ledger and admiring its journalists and the community of readers and supporters who care about honest, thoughtful local news.
The Ledger is continuing to grow. We’re having the strongest year financially that we’ve ever had, and we are serving Charlotte better than ever.
I’m thankful that Cristina and I, after working together as cub reporters when we were in our 20s, got the chance to work together again in our 40s and 50s. Her last day with us is June 9. We’ll soon start a search for someone new, to continue our important work. Of course, if you know Cristina, you know there’s no replacing her.
Cristina’s departure marks the end of an important chapter for The Ledger. I’ll miss her insights, her energy and the sense of camaraderie that comes from building something from scratch alongside someone you respect. But the foundation she helped lay is strong, and her fingerprints are all over what The Ledger has become. We know she will thrive in whatever she does, and we’ll be cheering her on, just as we know she’ll be cheering for us.
TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE: Clockwise from upper left: Managing editor Cristina Bolling and Ledger executive editor Tony Mecia at the first-ever 40 Over 40 awards, presented virtually in 2020 during Covid “live from Charlotte’s exclusive Quail Hollow Club” (filmed in Cristina’s basement); Cristina with cutout of David Hasselhoff at the first in-person and ’80s-themed 40 Over 40 awards in 2022; Cristina with her billboard that was part of Dress for Success Charlotte’s “Your Hour Her Power” fundraising campaign in 2023; Cristina (blue dress) with staff writer Lindsey Banks, Tony and business manager Brie Chrisman at the decades-themed 2024 40 Over 40 awards.
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