Q&A: How Jodi Kantor Started a Revolution
When Jodi Kantor started investigating Harvey Weinstein's behavior toward women, she didn't know what she would get. Sources told the New York Times reporter that the story wouldn't matter. "Everybody knows about Weinstein," she remembers people saying. "This is the way Hollywood has always been."
What she got was a months-long, nationwide reckoning. The #MeToo movement began with a single Times article about Weinstein's settlements on October 5. The story was based on the reporting of Kantor, 42, and her reporting partner, Megan Twohey. (Ronan Farrow's blockbuster New Yorker piece followed several days later.) Since then, women have found courage—and abusive men have found consequences.
Kantor, who has since broken stories about Louis C.K.'s misconduct, as well as Weinstein's "machine" of complicit bystanders, is now chronicling the recent wave of sexual abuse scandals. The two reporters continue to receive daily notes and phone calls from victims around the world. "Sometimes they hope we write about them, but sometimes they just want to be heard,” says Kantor. The reporter is humbled by the response to
