Photo by Michael S. Williamson

Whitney Shefte is a Peabody, Murrow and Emmy Award-winning independent video journalist and documentary filmmaker who worked for The Washington Post for over 17 years. With a highly versatile and adaptable skill set, Whitney works as a director, cinematographer, producer and editor on documentary, breaking news, interactive, feature stories and sponsored/commercial projects.

Whitney’s work has taken her all over the world to tell stories across coverage areas. She documented the war in Ukraine, climate change in Greenland, the ongoing conflict in Western Sahara, press access issues in Pakistan and the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda. She has also covered myriad issues across the United States from politics to healthcare to immigration to education.

Whitney believes deeply in the power visual storytelling has to create change. Her work has led viewers to raise money for a college student’s tuition and for a family displaced from their homes due to wildfires. It also helped spur the EPA to take action to confront a potential cancer cluster. In Ukraine, a woman's story of torture and rape was investigated by a human rights organization after it was viewed.

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 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. Whitney was also part of the team that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in public service for coverage of the January 6 insurrection and its aftermath. Her work on how traumatic brain injury impacts members of the military was awarded a Peabody and she is a three-time Murrow Award winner. Whitney is also a four-time national News & Documentary Emmy Award nominee and she has taken home 6 regional Emmy Awards.  

Whitney served as the president of WHNPA, a professional organization representing hundreds of visual journalists based in the Washington, D.C. region and beyond, from 2015 until 2023. Her responsibilities included leading an executive board, executing in-person and virtual contest judging, dreaming up and creating speaker-based events and workshops, overseeing an annual black-tie gala and advocating for press access issues. She has also worked as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the Corcoran College of Art + Design.

Whitney 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., and is available for assignments everywhere.