PERSON: Kara Swisher

Journalist

Kara Anne Swisher (/ˈkɛərə/ KAIR-ə; born December 11, 1962) is an American journalist. She has covered the business of the internet since 1994. As of 2023, Swisher was a contributing editor at New York Magazine, the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher, and the co-host of the podcast Pivot.

In 2014, she co-founded Vox Media’s Recode. From 2018 to 2022, she was an opinion writer for The New York Times, before re-joining Vox Media. She has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the All Things Digital conference and the online publication All Things D. A self-described “liberal, lesbian Donald Trump of San Francisco” in 2016, she expressed interest in running for political office in San Francisco.

Swisher lived in Roslyn Harbor, New York, until her father died when she was five years old. Afterward her family moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where she was raised. In a 2021 interview with Bryan Elliott for Inc.’s Behind The Brand, Swisher stated that, as a child, she always wanted to work either in the military, with military intelligence, or with the CIA.

She wrote for The Hoya, Georgetown’s original school newspaper, until she left to write for The Georgetown Voice, the university’s younger, scruffier, liberal alternative newspaper.

Swisher studied propaganda and received a BS in literature and journalism from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. in 1984. In 1985, she received her MS in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She also “spent some time” at Duke University studying misinformation and propaganda, which Swisher stated were “always my area of study”.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Swisher received a fellowship that allowed her to live almost a year in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Preparing for future employment within “the security apparatus,” she attempted to learn German, but never mastered the language.

In her early career, Swisher worked at the Washington City Paper in Washington, D.C. She interned at The Washington Post in 1986 and was later hired full-time.

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