Jodi Kantor

You know, the funny thing about Staten Island, especially pre-internet, is that you're very close to Manhattan, but you're also very far.

It's a different world.

I did not know any authors.

I did not know any journalists.

My parents' fanciest friends were like dentists.

And even though I inhaled journalism, and I mean, the arrival of periodicals at my house was like an event.

You know, it was like this message from a world that I longed to be a part of.

But I think my younger self thought it would have been very narcissistic to assume that anybody would want to read something I had written or edited.

It provoked like a kind of internal, who do you think you are, reaction.

Wow.

When did you first start reading?

thinking that you could be a writer or an artist of any type?

I'll tell you two stories about Columbia.

So that's where I went to college.

And that was like my first entry, you know, into a world in which such things were even possible.

So one of my best friends was and is named, we called him Frankie for the new book is dedicated to him.

His byline is Franklin for, and he was like my first friend who really understood journalism.

And he was like,

And senior year, he said, we're too cool to do our work in the Columbia Library.

We're going to take the subway down to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and work in the main reading room.