Jennifer Steinhauer

Jennifer Elizabeth Steinhauer is an American reporter for The New York Times who has covered the United States Congress since February 2010. She joined The Times in 1989 in New York, where she was City Hall Bureau Chief, and later moved to Los Angeles, where she was the Los Angeles Bureau Chief and Los Angeles bureau chief before moving to Washington in 2010. She is the author of a novel, two cookbooks, and “The Firsts,” the story of the women of the 116th Congress.

Steinhauer was born on February 16, 1969, in southwestern Michigan. She is the daughter of Joel Steinhauer, who worked as a union representative for the Michigan Education Association, and Lynn Steinhauer, who is a licensed social worker. Steinhauer attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she studied journalism, eventually graduating with a BFA in Communication Arts in 1990. In 1989, she began working as a copy girl for The New York Times while she was still a student at SVA.