The Washington Post’s Investigations team announces expansion

Eric Rich (via LinkedIn)

An announcement from Investigations Editor David Fallis:

We are pleased to announce the expansion and restructuring of the Investigations team.

First, the expansion:

The Visual Forensics Team moves from the Video Department to Investigations. The team, founded by editor Nadine Ajaka, under the stewardship of Video Department Head Micah Gelman, has from its earliest days been on the cutting edge of investigative journalism. The hallmark of the team’s work is using innovative reporting techniques to answer urgent accountability questions about the major events of our time. This brings it closer to the Investigations Desk’s Rapid Response Team, VF’s most frequent partner over the years. The teams worked together on a reconstruction of the violent crackdown on protesters in Lafayette Square, winner of the Alfred I. duPont silver baton award in 2021, and on a piece detailing the first minutes of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, part of the package that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2022. An examination of how Israel’s “Iron Wall” failed to prevent the Oct. 7 massacre, a project the teams did with Frontline, was a finalist last year for two Emmy awards. The VF team includes Deputy Editor Elyse Samuels and reporters Joyce Sohyun Lee, Meg Kelly, Sarah Cahlan, Samuel Oakford, Imogen Piper, Nilo Tabrizy, Jonathan Baran and Jarrett Ley.

The restructuring:

Eric Rich takes on a new role as deputy investigations editor, working as the principal deputy to Investigations Editor David Fallis and directly overseeing the VF and Rapid teams. Eric was the founding editor of the Rapid team. Under his guidance, the team has consistently produced high-caliber investigative work within the news cycle, often in partnership with reporters from other desks. Early on, one such partnership revealed the sexual misconduct allegations against U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama, and then exposed an effort by the group Project Veritas to dupe Post reporters with a false allegation against Moore. Those stories won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigations, the Toner Prize and a George Polk Award in 2018. The team has landed numerous high-profile scoops since its founding, from building collapses and plane crashes to school shootings and attempts to overturn a presidential election, and it has contributed to other packages that won or were finalists for the Pulitzer. Eric previously served as editor of the Universal News Desk, chief of what is now the Live Editing Desk and as a reporter and editor on the Local Desk.

Emma Brown takes on a new role as editor of the Rapid team. Emma, a former Rapid reporter, has proven to be a skilled and thoughtful editor and leader as Eric’s deputy during the past year. As a reporter, she introduced the world to Christine Blasey Ford and wrote prescient stories about election security. She was the first reporter to reveal that Trump-allied individuals had attempted to access voting equipment in Coffee County, Ga., activities that later figured into Trump’s indictment in Fulton County. As an editor, one of her first pieces was an ambitious reconstruction, staffed by multiple desks, of how D.C. nearly lost two professional sports teams. The story was gripping, nuanced and revealing. Emma is the author of “To Raise a Boy,” a book about the challenges and expectations boys face in modern American society, and she shared in The Post’s Pulitzer for coverage of Jan. 6. Like Nadine, Emma will report to Eric. Emma, a former middle school teacher and wilderness ranger, started at The Post as an intern on Local.

Shawn Boburg takes on a new role as deputy editor of the Rapid team. A member of the team from its earliest days, Shawn gravitates toward work that is ambitious and surprising. In the past year, he produced exclusive stories about the communication failures among law enforcement officers in Butler, Pa., work that presaged the findings of various official inquiries into the attempted assassination. He also led a series on how the platform Discord has failed to contain a predatory group that coerces vulnerable children into harming themselves. For the final story, Shawn and the team tracked down a teenager who, under an alias, had pressured a Minnesota man into committing suicide on a live stream while others watched. In addition to sharing in the Pulitzer for the Roy Moore stories, Shawn was a contributor to the American Icon series that won the 2024 Pulitzer for National Reporting. He also received the George Polk Award in 2013 as a reporter for the Bergen Record, for his coverage of the “Bridgegate” scandal. He is co-author of “Becoming Manny,” an authorized biography of the great MLB slugger Manny Ramirez.

Lisa Gartner takes on a new role as editor of the Long-term Investigations Team, and will report directly to David. Lisa joined The Post in September as deputy editor of the team and quickly established herself as a strong leader and steady hand, elevating and refining investigations already underway while developing new ideas. Lisa came to The Post from the San Francisco Chronicle, where she edited award-winning stories and projects on deadly police chases, children’s deaths at a prestigious hospital unit and a Wine Country mayor accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women. A 2022 investigation she led into San Francisco’s use of taxpayer money to shelter its homeless population in dilapidated and run-down hotels was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting. Other stories Lisa has edited have been recognized with the Deborah Howell Award for Writing Excellence and the IRE Award. Prior to The Chronicle, Lisa was an investigative reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer and an education and enterprise reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, where she won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting and George Polk Awards for Justice Reporting and Education Reporting for investigations into racist and abusive schools.

Two other strong additions to the team that were recently announced:

In October, Kelley Benham French, a gifted journalist who has helped drive distinctive journalism in newsrooms across the country, joined the Investigative Desk as the editor of a new Narrative Accountability Team. Kelley hit the ground running with the team of enterprise reporters formerly embedded in Local to get launched on ambitious narratives that chronicle deep investigative findings. Previously, Kelley edited projects for The Dallas Morning News, including Deadly Fake: 30 Days Inside Fentanyl’s Grip on North Texas, which engaged more than 30 journalists to tell 50 stories in a month. She also led ambitious projects at USA Today and the Tampa Bay Times and won a wide range of awards for her work. In Tampa Bay, she was a Pulitzer finalist in feature writing for Never Let Go, the story of the extremely premature birth of her daughter, Juniper, and edited For Their Own Good, which revealed decades of abuse at a boys’ reform school and was named a Pulitzer finalist.

Last month, Kainaz Amaria, one of the newsroom’s architects of immersive, visual-first journalism, became the visual enterprise editor for Investigative. She will help shape investigative projects with a focus on new forms of storytelling to broaden their reach and audience. As National’s visual enterprise editor, she oversaw stories that drew large audiences, including a deep-dive into the dangers of underwater volcanoes, the story behind the “J6 Prison Choir," the remarkable evolution of George Santos' campaign biography and Tucker Carlson’s text messages about Donald Trump. She also played a critical role in Terror On Repeat, a visually driven story which was part of the Pulitzer-winning AR-15 series. Kainaz arrived at The Post from Vox in 2022.

Please join me in congratulating my colleagues on their new roles.