Jodi Kantor - Education and Early Career

Education and Early Career

After growing up in New York City, Kantor moved to Holmdel Township, New Jersey where she graduated from Holmdel High School. Kantor graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in 1996. She was selected for and participated on the prestigious Dorot Fellowship in Israel from 1996-97 and later served as a New York City Urban Fellow. Later, she attended Harvard Law School for one semester, taking a leave to work at Slate, where she became an editor. After corresponding with New York Times columnist Frank Rich about how that paper could improve its arts coverage, she was brought on as editor of the Arts and Leisure section by Howell Raines. She is thought to be the youngest person to edit a section of the New York Times. Under the guidance of Rich and others, she made the section more visual, added new features and more ambitious reporting.

In 2007, Kantor turned to covering politics for the Times, including the 2008 presidential campaign and Barack Obama's biography. Starting in 2007, she wrote some of the earliest articles about Michelle Obama, the role of the Obama daughters in their father's career, the role of basketball in the president's life, his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his career as a constitutional law professor. After she broke the news of initial strain between Obama and Reverend Wright, he posted an angry letter to Kantor on his church's website. Her editors subsequently defended her. In autumn of 2009, she co-authored the story of Michelle Obama's slave roots and authored a cover story in the New York Times Magazine about the first marriage, for which she interviewed the president and first lady in the Oval Office. In November 2009, Kantor landed a reported seven-figure book deal to write a book about the president and first lady.