Photo by Carletta Girma
I'm a journalist covering federal agencies, policy and regulation from Washington, D.C, with a focus on the business and politics of food and agriculture. I report on a wide range of issues, including agribusiness, corporate consolidation, environment and climate, racial discrimination, and labor. I specialize in enterprise and data reporting that details the real-world impact of policymaking. I seek to hold power to account with rigorous and fair reporting.
I am currently an agriculture and energy policy reporter at Reuters, where I am our primary reporter covering the USDA and have collaborated with colleagues to cover other agencies like FEMA, FDA, CDC, and NOAA. I also cover federal committees and regulation, state lawmaking, and lots of other topics like bird flu, food safety, worker unions, carbon pipelines, fisheries, and more.
Previously, I was a staff writer and associate editor at the Food and Environment Reporting Network, where I led agenda-setting coverage of the spread of Covid-19 among food system workers and which laid the groundwork for a Congressional investigation into worker safety protections and the meat industry's handling of the pandemic.
My reporting has been published in the Guardian, the Nation, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, NPR, the American Prospect, Time, and other outlets. I've been interviewed for numerous podcasts and radio shows, including PBS News Weekend, NPR's Weekend Edition, the CBS Weekend News Roundup and Vox's Future Perfect, and appeared in an episode of Al Jazeera's Fault Lines that was nominated for a 2021 News Emmy.
My reporting has been cited in dozens of print and television media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, NBC Nightly News, and John Oliver's Last Week Tonight.
I was a 2022 environmental law media fellow at Vermont Law and Graduate School and a 2021 fellow in the U.C. Berkeley - 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship, where my reporting focused on Covid-19, worker unions, and the food sector. In 2021, I won two reporting awards from the National Association of Agricultural Journalists for a feature on racism in FFA and for my Covid-19 mapping project. I was the 2020 recipient of the National Farmers Union Milt Hakel Award for excellence in agricultural reporting and I was a member of the 2019-2020 cohort of the New Economies Reporting Project finance solutions fellowship. In 2019, I was selected for the Institute of Journalism and Natural Resources' Lower Mississippi River Institute. I am a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, National Association of Agriculture Journalists, and Investigative Reporters & Editors.
You can follow me on X at @leahjdouglas, on Bluesky at @leahjdouglas.bsky.social and on Instagram at @leahreuters.
I'm a journalist covering federal agencies, policy and regulation from Washington, D.C, with a focus on the business and politics of food and agriculture. I report on a wide range of issues, including agribusiness, corporate consolidation, environment and climate, racial discrimination, and labor. I specialize in enterprise and data reporting that details the real-world impact of policymaking. I seek to hold power to account with rigorous and fair reporting.
I am currently an agriculture and energy policy reporter at Reuters, where I am our primary reporter covering the USDA and have collaborated with colleagues to cover other agencies like FEMA, FDA, CDC, and NOAA. I also cover federal committees and regulation, state lawmaking, and lots of other topics like bird flu, food safety, worker unions, carbon pipelines, fisheries, and more.
Previously, I was a staff writer and associate editor at the Food and Environment Reporting Network, where I led agenda-setting coverage of the spread of Covid-19 among food system workers and which laid the groundwork for a Congressional investigation into worker safety protections and the meat industry's handling of the pandemic.
My reporting has been published in the Guardian, the Nation, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, NPR, the American Prospect, Time, and other outlets. I've been interviewed for numerous podcasts and radio shows, including PBS News Weekend, NPR's Weekend Edition, the CBS Weekend News Roundup and Vox's Future Perfect, and appeared in an episode of Al Jazeera's Fault Lines that was nominated for a 2021 News Emmy.
My reporting has been cited in dozens of print and television media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, NBC Nightly News, and John Oliver's Last Week Tonight.
I was a 2022 environmental law media fellow at Vermont Law and Graduate School and a 2021 fellow in the U.C. Berkeley - 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship, where my reporting focused on Covid-19, worker unions, and the food sector. In 2021, I won two reporting awards from the National Association of Agricultural Journalists for a feature on racism in FFA and for my Covid-19 mapping project. I was the 2020 recipient of the National Farmers Union Milt Hakel Award for excellence in agricultural reporting and I was a member of the 2019-2020 cohort of the New Economies Reporting Project finance solutions fellowship. In 2019, I was selected for the Institute of Journalism and Natural Resources' Lower Mississippi River Institute. I am a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, National Association of Agriculture Journalists, and Investigative Reporters & Editors.
You can follow me on X at @leahjdouglas, on Bluesky at @leahjdouglas.bsky.social and on Instagram at @leahreuters.
