D.C.-area nightlife, events and dining

Debra Leithauser began her career at the Orlando Sentinel, where she spent a year on the national copy desk before taking on editing the paper’s new teen page. Within a year, the teen page had become a four-page section, her staff of student writers had grown from 12 to 70, and the section began to win awards for its creativity and out-of-the-box coverage. She also helped start the Youth Editorial Alliance, a national group of youth editors from around the country.

Three-plus years later, she was named the assistant editor of the Sentinel’s Sunday magazine, where she edited long-form cover stories and short front-of-the-magazine features. When her reporter-husband returned from an ad­ven­ture sailing across the Atlantic on a replica of the first America’s Cup winner, they decided to venture north and ended up in Washington. Debra was hired as the design editor for Knight Ridder/Tribune, and she eventually became deputy managing editor, then managing editor, of a small department that produced news and feature pages designed for other newspapers to publish.

In 2003, she came to the Post to be deputy editor of the Sunday Source, and eventually became editor of the Source as well as TV Week. In 2009, she had a stint on the Post’s National desk, worked on the newspaper’s redesign team, launched On Love with Ellen McCarthy, and took over the Sunday Magazine. In August 2010, she took over the print and digital editions of Weekend / Going Out Guide.