Jackie Spinner

Jackie Spinner is a staff writer for the Washington Post, where she has been a reporter since 1995. She started at the Post as a summer intern on the Financial staff after earning her master's degree at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. She has a bachelor of science degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. At the Post, Spinner has worked as a Metro reporter and Financial reporter. Before going to Iraq, she covered accounting policy for two years and was the newspaper's expert on, in her own words "weather hedges and obscure financial instruments." She went to Iraq as a war correspondent and survived mortar attacks, car bombs, the battle for Fallujah and a kidnapping attempt outside of Abu Ghraib prison. She has contributed to MSNBC, PBS, CNN, BBC, ABC, and National Public Radio and was featured in a PBS Frontline documentary on reporting the war in Iraq. Before the Post, Spinner contributed to the Oakland Tribune, the San Diego Union Tribune, the Decatur Herald and Review and the Los Angeles Times TV magazine. Her proudest moment was when the Daily Egyptian at Southern Illinois University beat the Daily Illini of the University of Illinois in the state college newspaper competition. It was 1992. She stood on her editor in chief's desk and asked her reporters to shout for one minute as loud as they could for all the people who doubted that they could be the best. Spinner is an award-winning journalist and travel writer, whose exploits from the Galapagos Islands, Rock of Gibraltar, Spain, Finland and Jordan have been detailed in the travel pages of the Washington Post. She is a member of the Journalism and Women's Symposium and was a media fellow at Duke University in 2002. Spinner grew up in Illinois. Her proud parents were a pipe fitter and a schoolteacher. She lives in Washington, D.C.