Lizzie Johnson joins The Washington Post’s Local Enterprise team

WASHINGTON DC, MAY 24: The Washington Post Building at 1301 K St. NW in Washington DC, May 24, 2016. (Photo by John McDonnell / The Washington Post) (John McDonnell)

Announcement from Local Editor Mike Semel, Deputy Local Editor Monica Norton and Local Enterprise and Projects Editor Lynda Robinson:

We are thrilled to announce that Lizzie Johnson will be joining our Local Enterprise team.

Lizzie is an enterprise writer at the San Francisco Chronicle who has been covering Northern California’s wildfires with exceptional skill for the past three years, deftly juggling breaking news and deeply reported narratives. She was also the Chronicle’s City Hall reporter for two years, where she delivered scoops about San Francisco’s exorbitant towing fees and long 911 response times. Her stories forced officials to lower those fees and hire more 911 dispatchers.

Lizzie is a two-time Livingston Award finalist and just won the Best of the West long-form feature writing award for her remarkable story about a serial arsonist. Her book, “Paradise”, about the deadly 2018 Camp fire that devastated a California town, is being published by Crown in August.

Lizzie grew up in a farming family in Nebraska, where her parents still live, and studied journalism at the University of Missouri. To better understand wildfires, she also enrolled in and graduated from a professional firefighting school in 2019.

Lizzie is an avid hiker who is about to tackle the 211-mile-long John Muir Trail in California’s High Sierra. She reports that both she and her dog, Indie, are coffee addicts, making her especially well-suited for our dog-obsessed, highly caffeinated enterprise operation. She starts her new job in July.