Early last year, the investigative journalist Jodi Kantor was asked to give the commencement address to students at Columbia University in New York. The place was in chaos – amid continuing pro-Palestinian protests students were expelled, or arrested and detained by immigration officials, while President Trump had ordered a $400m withdrawal of federal funding (which was later reinstated as part of a settlement with the administration). Kantor was “horrified” to see what had happened at Columbia – her alma mater, where she was sacked from her first journalism job at the student paper– “a place and campus I loved, a place that stands for discussion and ideas and progress. I said: ‘I’ll do it if I can speak to the students first.’”
She spoke to several. They didn’t want to talk about Israel or Gaza, or Trump, or what was happening at the university and its implications for free speech. “They said: ‘Our class, despite all of its political differences, is united in anxiety over one question. When everything feels so broken, how do we start? How do we find our life’s work in this environment?’”
These questions, she says, “seized me” and that commencement address inspired her book, How to Start, written in the early mornings before she’d go to her job as a reporter at the New York Times. It’s a short and punchy read, full of practical and wise advice aimed at young people, but which anyone from midlife career switchers to those who suspect they’re on the wrong path might find helpful.
As a child, when the New York Times arrived every day, Kantor devoured it: “It was like a message from another world.” But it never occurred to her that she could become a journalist. After Columbia, where she studied history, Kantor went to Harvard Law School. If it was a big deal to get a place at Harvard, it was an even bigger deal to drop out, but she just couldn’t ignore her desire to pursue journalism. She got a job at the online magazine Slate, then joined the New York Times as arts editor, before becoming a reporter.
Dropping out of college to pursue journalism? Who does that?