Jane Mayer

Jane Mayer is one of America's most distinguished investigative journalists. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1995, where she covers politics, money, and the conservative movement.

She is the author of "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" (2016), which the New York Times named as one of the ten best books of the year and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The book traces how the Koch brothers and a network of wealthy conservatives built a political machine that reshaped American politics.

Her other books include "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals" (2008), also a National Book Award finalist and named one of the top ten works of journalism of the decade by NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She co-authored "Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas" with Jill Abramson (also a National Book Award finalist), and "Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988" with Doyle McManus.

Mayer began her career at the Wall Street Journal, where in 1984 she became the paper's first female White House correspondent. She later covered the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and politics for the paper. She received the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting, and the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence.

She received Peabody and Emmy awards for her reporting in Frontline's 2023 documentary "Clarence and Ginni: Politics, Power and the Supreme Court."

In 2009, she was Princeton University's Ferris Professor of Journalism.

Mayer is known for her meticulous, deeply sourced reporting. Her work on the Koch network provided the foundational research for understanding how dark money has transformed American democracy.