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Donna Rosene Leff

Donna Rosene Leff (BSJ70, MSJ71) was inducted into the Medill Hall of Achievement in 2019.

Professor Leff is a long-serving full-time member of the Medill faculty and a faculty affiliate of the University's Institute for Policy Research. She was editor of the Daily Northwestern from 1969 to 1970.

Leff teaches courses in science writing, urban reporting, urban issues, culture and the business of journalism, and media law and ethics. She does research on science/policy issues and the role of minorities and race in media coverage and in the profession. She is co-author of "The Journalism of Outrage" and several related studies on the effect of investigative reporting on social issues.

Leff's interest in health policy research is an outgrowth of her award-winning investigative reporting for Chicago Today and the Chicago Tribune newspapers and the Ypsilanti Michigan Press, where her exposés included the cover-up of murders at a Veterans Administration Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and widespread waste in public hospitals in Chicago.

Leff received a doctorate degree in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley.