Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Washington Correspondent, The New York Times

What I Cover

I write at the intersection of health policy and politics. My stories focus on policy debates over issues including the coronavirus pandemic, reproductive rights, gun violence prevention, the ethics of virology research and the cost of prescription drugs. I’m interested in how the partisanship that divides America is affecting the nation’s health.

My Background

I joined The Times in 1997 as a science writer based in Washington, covering the Food and Drug Administration and stories about medical research. I have written about bioethics issues like the death of a gene therapy patient and an experimental artificial heart. But the bulk of my career has been focused on politics. I have covered Congress and was a White House correspondent during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In the 2012 election cycle, I wrote a series of biographical profiles of Republican presidential contenders, including Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney. I was bureau chief of the Mid-Atlantic region from 2015 to 2017, and I focused on America’s cities, notably Baltimore, covering issues of race and policing surrounding the death of Freddie Gray. In 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, I left Capitol Hill to cover health policy, a beat that merges all the strands of my reporting career. Before joining The Times, I worked at The Los Angeles Times, where I shared in two Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of racial unrest and a devastating earthquake. I am a graduate of the University of Virginia, the proud mom of two adult children, and an amateur painter in my (scant) spare time. I love stories that involve art, history, health and politics.