KARA ANNE SWISHER born on this date, 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 became a contributing writer to the New York Times‘ Opinion section in August 2018, focusing on tech. She has written about topics such as Elon Musk, Kevin Systrom’s departure from Instagram, Google and censorship, and an internet Bill of Rights.
In September 2020, the Times premiered Sway, a semiweekly podcast hosted by Swisher focused on the subject of power and those who wield it, with Nancy Pelosi featured as her first guest. Other guests have included Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, actor Sacha Baron Cohen, Apple CEO Tim Cook, entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, former Presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar, United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, film director Spike Lee, Parler CEO John Matze, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, USSF CSO Gen. John W. Raymond, and social activist and celebrity Monica Lewinsky.
In June 2022, Swisher announced she’d be leaving the New York Times to pursue a new project at Vox Media’s New York Magazine. Swisher became an editor-at-large and the host of On with Kara Swisher in September 2022.
Swisher married engineer and technology executive Megan Smith in Marin County in 1999 at a time when marriage equality was not legal in California. They had additional legal wedding ceremonies in 2003 in Niagara Falls, Canada, in 2004 as part of the San Francisco 2004 same-sex weddings, and again in San Francisco, California in November 2008 in advance of California Proposition 8, which declared same-sex marriages invalid in California. Swisher and Smith have two sons, Louis and Alexander. They separated in 2014, and were divorced as of 2017. Swisher married Amanda Katz on October 3, 2020, with whom she has two children.
In 2011 Swisher suffered a “mini-stroke” while on a flight to Hong Kong, where she was subsequently hospitalized and put on anticoagulant medication. She wrote about the experience in a remembrance of Luke Perry, after a stroke led to his death in 2019.
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.”