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.[3]
Swisher lived in Roslyn Harbor in eastern Long Island, New York until her father died when she was five years old. Her family moved to Princeton, New Jersey and she grew up there.[7] In a 2021 interview with Bryan Elliott for Inc.'s Behind The Brand, Swisher said that as a child, she always wanted to work either in the military, with military intelligence, or with the CIA.[7] She wrote for The Hoya, Georgetown's original school newspaper and left to write for The Georgetown Voice, the university's younger, scruffier, liberal alternative newspaper.[8]
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Swisher received a fellowship allowing her to live almost a year in Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany. Preparing for future employment within "the security apparatus", she attempted to learn German but never mastered the language.[13] Then 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.[14][15]
Career
The Wall Street Journal
Swisher joined The Wall Street Journal in 1997, working from its bureau in San Francisco. She created and wrote Boom Town, a column devoted to the companies, personalities and culture of Silicon Valley which appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal's Marketplace section and online. During that time, she was cited as being the most influential reporter covering the internet by Industry Standard magazine.[16]
In 2003, with her colleague Walt Mossberg, she launched the All Things Digital conference and later expanded it into a daily blog called AllThingsD.com. The conference featured interviews by Swisher and Mossberg of top technology executives including Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison.[17]
She is the author of aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web, published by Times Business Print Books in July 1998. The sequel, There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future, was published in the fall of 2003 by Crown Business Print Books. In 2021, it was announced that she signed a two-book memoir deal with Simon & Schuster.[18] The first, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, was released in February 2024.
Recode
On January 1, 2014, Swisher and Mossberg struck out on their own with the Recode website, based in San Francisco.[19] In the spring of 2014 they held the inaugural Code Conference near Los Angeles.[20]Vox Media acquired the website in May 2015.[21] A month later in June 2015, they launched Recode Decode, a weekly podcast in which Swisher interviews prominent figures in the technology space with Stewart Butterfield featured as the first guest.[22]
In September 2018, Recode and Vox Media launched Pivot, a semi-weekly news commentary podcast co-hosted by Swisher and Scott Galloway. In April 2020, New York Magazine announced Pivot would be joining the magazine's properties, dropping the Recode branding, and Swisher would also join as editor-at-large.[23] In May 2020, Swisher wrote on Twitter that she had not been involved in editing or assigning stories on Recode for many years.[24]
The New York Times
Swisher became a contributing writer to the New York Times'Opinion section in August 2018, focusing on tech.[25] She has written about topics like Elon Musk, Kevin Systrom's departure from Instagram, Google and censorship, and an internet Bill of Rights.
In June 2022, Swisher announced that she would leave The New York Times to pursue a new project at New York magazine.[28]
Vox Media
Swisher became an editor-at-large at New York Magazine and the host of On with Kara Swisher in September 2022. The first episode of 'On' premiered September 26.[29]
Other activities
Swisher was a judge[30] for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's NYC BigApps competition in New York. She told Rolling Stone writer Claire Hoffman: "A lot of these people I cover are babies", Swisher says. "I always call them papier-mâché–they just wilt."[31]
Swisher appeared as herself in a 2015 episode of the HBO show Silicon Valley.[32] In 2016, she announced that she planned to run for mayor of San Francisco as a Democrat in 2023. She was seen as likely to run on a "highly progressive" platform.[2][33]
Swisher wrote of her experiences working for The McLaughlin Group in a 2018 Slate article, in which she alleged that host John McLaughlin abused staff and sexually harassed women. Reflecting on his death from prostate cancer in 2016, she wrote, "I’m so glad he’s dead. Seriously, I’m glad he’s dead. He was a jackass. He deserved it."[34]
In January 2019, Swisher told people who disapproved of a Gillette advertisement after the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation, "... to all you aggrieved folks who thought this Gillette ad was too much bad-men-shaming, after we just saw it come to life with those awful kids and their fetid smirking harassing that elderly man on the Mall: Go __ yourselves."[35] Citing Swisher's comment as an example of how inaccurate many media accounts of the story had been, Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic Monthly observed, "You know the left has really changed in this country when you find its denizens... lionizing the social attitudes of the corporate monolith Procter & Gamble."[36] Swisher apologized in a tweet two days later.[37]
In 2021 and 2023, Swisher hosted the official companion podcast for the third and fourth seasons of HBO's TV series Succession.[38] In 2024, she received criticism for her book “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story," with critics saying that it was "anti-worker."[39]
Mockery of Vivek Ramaswamy
On August 24, 2023, Swisher urged her Twitter audience to come up with nicknames for Vivek Ramaswamy and proposed her own, "RamaSMARMY". Several Indian-American commentators took strong exception to her attacks, which were perceived as racially targeted.[40]
Swisher is known for wearing dark aviator sunglasses even while indoors, explaining "I have light sensitivity a little; I just don’t like bright lights."[52][49] She grew up Catholic and identifies as agnostic.[53]
Bibliography
aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web. New York: Random House International, 1999. ISBN9780812931914, OCLC313499003
Kara Swisher and Lisa Dickey, There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for the Digital Future New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003. ISBN9781400049646, OCLC58726021
