Jane Mayer

Jane Mayer
Mayer at the 2008 Texas Book Festival, Austin, Texas
Born	Jane Meredith Mayer 1955 New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Journalist and author
Alma mater	Yale University (B.A., 1977)
Spouse	William B. Hamilton (1992–present); 1 child

Jane Meredith Mayer (born 1955) is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1995. In recent years, she has written for that publication on money in politics, government prosecution of whistleblowers, and the United States Predator drone program.

Mayer was born in New York City. Her mother, Meredith (née Nevins), is a painter, former president of the Manhattan Graphics Center, and a print-maker. Her father, William Mayer, is a composer. Her paternal great-great-grandfather was Emanuel Lehman, one of the founders of Lehman Brothers, and her maternal grandparents were Mary Fleming (Richardson) and the historian Allan Nevins. In several books about the Rockefeller family (including the authorized biography of John D. Rockefeller), Allan Nevins, held Rockefeller and similar figures up as heroes of American capitalism.

Mayer was graduated in 1973 from Fieldston. While in high school, she spent a year studying as an exchange student at the Bedales School in England. A 1977 graduate of Yale University, she was a campus stringer for Time magazine. She continued her studies at Oxford University.

Mayer began her journalistic career in Vermont, writing for two small weekly papers, The Weathersfield Weekly and The Black River Tribune, before moving to the daily Rutland Herald. After moving to Washington, D.C. as a metropolitan reporter for the now-defunct Washington Star, she joined The Wall Street Journal in 1982. She worked for it for 12 years, during which time she was the first woman to be named the newspaper's White House correspondent, and subsequently, senior writer, and front page editor.