Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes joined The New York Times as a national correspondent in August 2008, with a focus on the intersection of politics and economic policy. Previously she had been chief political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau since 2006. During her 18 years at The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Calmes covered the White House and Congress, focusing mostly on budget and tax legislation, and also reported on congressional and presidential election campaigns as well as issues confronting state and local governments.

In Bill Clinton's second term, she was one of the Journal's two White House correspondents from mid-1997 to mid-1999 and then began covering the 2000 presidential campaign, and George W. Bush in particular. After the 2000 presidential election recount, Ms. Calmes covered subsequent election reform efforts and politics. In June 2001, she was named the features editor for the Journal Washington bureau's "Politics and Policy" page, and as the writer of the well-known "Washington Wire" column in Friday's Journal. She returned to full-time reporting in late 2002, and through 2004 was again a White House correspondent covering the Bush administration.

In May 2005, Ms. Calmes was awarded the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency.

Ms. Calmes began her journalism career in 1978 at the Abilene (Texas) Reporter-News. The next year she went to the Austin, Texas, capital bureau of 14 Harte-Hanks Newspapers and in 1981 was hired by the Dallas Morning News for its Austin bureau. After moving to Washington in 1984, she worked for Congressional Quarterly, a weekly magazine, until 1990, except for 1988 when she worked in the Washington, D.C., bureau of the Atlanta Constitution and Cox Newspapers Inc.

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Ms. Calmes earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Toledo and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She is most proud of her two daughters, Sarah and Carrie, neither of whom wants to be a journalist—though Carrie only recently indicated she may be reconsidering.