Lizzie Johnson

Washington, D.C.

Enterprise Reporter

Education: University of Missouri at Columbia, BA in Journalism, BA in Political Science

Lizzie Johnson is an investigative reporter on The Washington Post's narrative accountability team. Previously, she was a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. Johnson is a three-time finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Her work has been featured by the Columbia Journalism Review, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, and Harvard University’s Nieman Storyboard. Her in-depth coverage of California's wildfire crisis led to her first book, 'Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire," which is being developed as a feature film. She has reported
Latest from Lizzie Johnson

Meet Ukraine’s top fighting unit — at least that’s what its ad says

Ukraine’s brigades can recruit their own soldiers, and they compete with each other to craft the best advertising campaigns to sell the war.

October 14, 2024

No air raid sirens on Ukraine’s tallest mountain, just the promise of a future

Tens of thousands climb Mount Hoverla every year. During the war, it has become a pilgrimage for those seeking to lay down their grief and sorrow for a few hours.

October 6, 2024

It was Ukraine’s ‘safe’ city. Then his whole family died.

The deaths of Yaroslav Bazylevych’s whole family — killed in Lviv by a Russian hypersonic missile — proved there was no sanctuary from the war.

September 29, 2024

When Russian bombs fall on Kharkiv, this man collects the evidence

This police investigator records the wreckage, measures the shrapnel and gathers the bodies, even without knowing if Russia will ever be held accountable.

September 17, 2024
Police and prosecutorial staff on Sept. 2 collect bomb fragments as evidence of a Russian glide bomb strike.

Russian counteroffensive in Ukrainian-controlled Kursk begins, says Zelensky

Zelensky said that the Russian counteroffensive had long been expected and was planned for.

September 13, 2024
Civilians evacuated from the Kursk regional border area with Ukraine, wait to receive humanitarian aid and medical care delivered by the Russian Red Cross in Kursk, Russia, on Tuesday.

Kyiv’s bombed children’s hospital rebuilds, and one boy heads home

Hundreds with severe medical needs were displaced by July’s missile strike on Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, but the hospital was rebuilt and many returned.

September 13, 2024

In Ukraine’s Poltava, soldier buries a father he thought safe from war

One of the deadliest single bombardments of the war left dozens of victims to be buried more than 100 miles from the front lines.

September 9, 2024

How a Russian airstrike ripped through people’s lives in Ukraine’s Poltava

The central Ukrainian city had been relatively untouched by air strikes. Then came one of the biggest attacks of the war.

September 6, 2024

Back to school in Ukraine’s embattled Kharkiv means heading underground

After years of distance learning, Kharkiv’s students finally get back to school — in a purpose built underground bunker safe from the Russian drones and missiles.

September 4, 2024

More than 50 killed in Russian missile strike on Ukrainian city of Poltava

Two missiles hit a military educational institution and nearby hospital. President Volodymyr Zelensky called for lifting restrictions on Western-supplied weapons.

September 3, 2024
First responders return to the site of the Russian missile strike on the Military Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology in Poltava, Ukraine, after an air raid alert Tuesday.