Empowering the World's Documentarians

Whitney Shefte

(She/her)

Independent filmmaker and video journalist

Washington, DC US

Available for Full Time

Available for Freelance

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Open To Virtual Coffee

About

Whitney Shefte is a Peabody, Murrow and Emmy Award-winning independent filmmaker and video journalist. She was a senior video journalist at The Washington Post for over 17 years. Whitney has documented the war in Ukraine, climate change in Greenland, the ongoing conflict in Western Sahara, press access issues in Pakistan, and myriad issues across the United States from politics to healthcare to immigration to education. In 2023, Whitney was awarded, along with the other women of the Washington Post who covered the war in Ukraine, with the International Women's Media Foundation's Courage in Journalism Award. She earned the Post's Ben Bradlee Award for Courage in Journalism in 2022 and was named Multimedia Journalist of the Year in 2023 and 2019 by the White House News Photographers Association (WHNPA). Whitney was also a finalist for the Livingston Award in 2014 and her work was part of a military medicine package named as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. She was part of the team that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in public service for coverage of the January 6 insurrection and its aftermath. Whitney served as the president of WHNPA from 2015 until 2023 and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication where she concentrated in photojournalism. She lives in Washington, DC.

Featured Work

Texas uses aggressive tactics to arrest migrants as Title 42 ends

With an uptick in illegal immigration and what they say is a lack of federal assistance, officials in Kinney County, Tex., are taking matters into their own hands to fight what they call an “invasion.” The high-speed chases, criminal charges and other controversial tactics have angered opponents of Operation Lone Star and left everyone wondering what to expect once Title 42's border policy is overturned

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The Next Edition

Hurricanes. Assault. Climate change. Vaping. The student journalists at the Eagle Eye, the school newspaper at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, have never shied away from chronicling fraught topics. But on Feb. 14, their Parkland, Fla., school became the news, when 14 students and three staff members were killed. Media from across the nation descended. But no one had the perspective of the reporters, editors, photographers and designers at the Eagle Eye. They had huddled in closets as a gunman stalked the hallways. They had lost classmates and teachers. There was a story, and it was theirs to tell. The Washington Post filmed the students as they put together an edition of their paper that was unlike any before.

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Life under Russian occupation: How she lost her husband

Liudmila Trykushenko and her husband were sleeping next to each other in their cellar to hide from the shelling happening in their hometown, Izyum, when an explosion woke her.

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Separated by war, a Ukrainian family balances safety, duty and love

Like thousands of families in Ukraine, Andrii Mishchenko and Olha Taranova said goodbye at the border. Andrii headed east towards the frontlines. Olha headed west with her 11 year-old daughter and elderly father eventually stopping in the safety of Germany. Now over a year later, the family deals with the strain of separation, setting into a new culture and living with the risks of fighting in one of the most dangerous areas in Ukraine.

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