Kara Swisher went to Princeton Day School from 1976 to 1980. She graduated from Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service with a BS degree in 1984.
Later she worked at the Washington City Paper in Washington, D.C. She interned at The Washington Post in 1986 and was later hired full-time.
Mrs. 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 period, she was cited as the most influential reporter covering the Internet by Industry Standard magazine.
In 2003, with her colleague Walt Mossberg, she launched the All Things Digital conference and later expanded it into a daily blog site called AllThingsD.com. The conference featured interviews by Swisher and Mossberg of top technology executives, such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison, all of whom appeared on stage without prepared remarks or slides.
On January 1, 2014, Swisher and Mossberg struck out on their own with the Recode website, based in San Francisco.[10] In the spring of 2014 they held the inaugural Code Conference near Los Angeles.[11] Vox Media acquired the website in May 2015.[12] 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.[13]
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, subsequently dropping the Recode branding, and Swisher would also be joining as editor-at-large.[14] In May 2020, Swisher wrote on Twitter that she had not been involved in editing or assigning stories on Recode for many years.
Swisher became a contributing writer to The New York Times Opinion Section in August 2018, focusing on tech.[16] She has written about Elon Musk, Kevin Systrom's departure from Instagram, Google and censorship and an internet Bill of Rights. She also answers questions weekly during live videos on Twitter.[17]
In September 2020, the Times premiered Sway, a semiweekly podcast hosted by Swisher, with Nancy Pelosi featured as her first guest.