Who is james taranto

That way ideas take their most persuasive form before being published on our pages. Guided by Principle, Grounded in Purpose. Growing up in suburban Los Angeles, I was interested in computers. When I started college at 15, I majored in computer science. I got bored within a couple of years, dropped out, then realized I enjoyed writing and was good at it.

So I went back to school with a major in journalism and a minor in philosophy. I never quite graduated, but I did get a good story out of it: When I was an editor on my school paper, I wrote an opinion piece arguing in favor of free speech. It offended the journalism professor who served as faculty adviser, and she suspended me from my editorial post.

My first full-time job was in the public relations department of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. PR did not agree with me, so I hopped on the train to New York and accepted a job as managing editor of Street News, a newspaper sold on the subway.

That turned out not to be a stable organization, and I left after six weeks. Talented editors are difficult to find, because for the most part they work in obscurity. But we would send advance copies of City Journal to our friends at the editorial page for adaptation into op-eds, and I would frequently do the work of cutting a 7,word piece to a 1,word one.

I joined the Journal in as an assistant editorial features op-ed editor and was promoted to deputy the following year. In the late Bob Bartley tapped me to edit OpinionJournal. I began contributing to, and then writing, the Best of the Web column and developed an ingenious reader-participation model that allowed me to look smarter than I am.

Writing Best of the Web was one of the best jobs in journalism, and I left it only after I was offered another of the best jobs: editorial features editor, a position I assumed at the beginning of December 8, The Politicization of Motherhood October 27, Barton Swaim.

Jason Willick. Taranto emerged victorious. He soon landed in the public relations office of the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D. After two years, he decided to make a move to New York City. He worked for a few small publications before he was offered a job at the Journal. He jumped at the opportunity. Taranto is, after all, very passionate about writing. The New York Times later gave him credit for disproving the story.

Journalism is very different from the way it used to be, he says.