Jake Tapper Biography

Fast Facts

• Was awarded the Merriman Smith Award for presidential coverage under deadline pressure from the White House Correspondents' Association three years in a row
• Was named ABC News' senior White House correspondent in 2008
• Graduated Magna Cum Laude from Dartmouth College with a degree in History
• Began his journalism career at "Washington City Paper" as a senior writer, where he won a Society of Professional Journalists award
• Had a variety of jobs, including spokesman for a congresswoman, publicist for Powell Tate, and freelance writer for The Washington Post before breaking into TV
• He worked at Salon․com as their Washington correspondent, and wrote on a range of topics including political profiles and the Enron scandal
• Best known as the anchor of the TV news show "The Lead with Jake Tapper․"
• Has reported on a wide variety of stories, including the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the war in Iraq
• Has written three books, one of which, "The Outpost," debuted at number ten on the New York Times Best Seller list
• Got a job at City Paper by writing a cover story about Monica Lewinsky, with whom he'd gone on a date a few weeks before the scandal broke