Promotions on Washington Post’s Video Enterprise team

Whitney Shefte becomes senior video reporter. Since first joining the enterprise team in 2008, Whitney has covered climate change in Greenland, the ongoing conflict in Western Sahara, press access issues in Pakistan and most recently spent more than seven weeks covering the war in Ukraine. Her awards include a Peabody Award and multiple Edward R. Murrow awards. She was named Multimedia Journalist of the Year in 2019 by the White House News Photographers Association, where she has served as president since 2015. Whitney first came to WPNI in 2006 as a photo and multimedia intern, back when the paper and website were separate entities.

Lee Powell becomes senior video reporter. Lee first came to The Post in 2013 as a show producer for PostTV before moving to the VJ team. At The Post, Lee has roamed widely, from tracking down beloved National Zoo panda Tai Shan in China to documenting the five-year journey of a nearly complete T. rex skeleton from Montana to the Smithsonian. He’s also been at the birth of a new airline and most recently looked at energy prices from atop a drilling rig in Oklahoma. Before The Post, Lee was a video editor at the Associated Press in Washington and a metro reporter at The Dallas Morning News, where, in 2005, he was the first writer to pick up a video camera.

Zoeann Murphy becomes senior video reporter. Zoeann first came to The Post in 2013 and has covered the globe with a particular focus on refugees and climate change, including the series “Gone in a Generation.” In 2016, Zoeann was part of the team for “Raising Barriers,” an innovative multimedia exploration of border walls for which she traveled to eight countries. It was recognized with awards from the National Press Foundation, World Press Photo and others. She also won an Edward R. Murrow Award for her coverage of the Flint, Mich., water crisis and a Webby for her reporting on Standing Rock. In 2019, she won the Ben Bradlee Award for Courage in Journalism. Most recently, Zoeann reported from Poland on the refugee crisis at the Ukraine border.

Whitney Leaming becomes senior video reporter. Often the first to raise her hand to cover breaking news, Whitney has covered the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. She’s reported on violent protests in Ferguson, Mo.; Baltimore; Minneapolis; and Kenosha, Wis. In 2021, Whitney was briefly taken into custody by D.C. police while covering the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and just spent seven weeks in Ukraine, covering the Russian invasion and its lead-up. Since coming to The Post as an intern in 2013, Whitney has won three Edward R. Murrow Awards, a Scripps Howard Award, World Press Photo Awards and the Ben Bradlee Award for Courage in Journalism.

Jorge Ribas becomes senior video reporter. Jorge came to the enterprise team in 2015 and has covered mass shootings, wildfires, tornadoes and far-right rallies. In 2017, he was part of The Post’s national Emmy-nominated coverage of Hurricane Harvey. Sprinkled in are some joyful stories, too, like his profile of DC Diva quarterback and homicide detective Allyson Hamlin and helping sports editor Sarah Larimer realize her dream of becoming an Olympic luger. If you’re feeling nostalgic, here’s his story on the last days of our 15th Street newsroom. Before coming to The Post in 2014, Jorge spent six years as a science video journalist at Discovery Channel.

Jon Gerberg becomes senior video reporter. Jon came to The Post in 2017 and has reported from Venezuela, Gaza, Afghanistan and most recently Ukraine. His coverage of the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York won him and Lenny Bernstein the 2020 Ben Bradlee Award for Courage in Journalism. He has also won a Peabody, an Edward R. Murrow Award and a Webby. Prior to The Post, Jon was a freelance reporter for the New York Times and Associated Press before becoming a foreign affairs producer for “PBS Newshour.”