Wikipedia Biography / Profile Background
Introduction :
Rebecca Ballhaus is a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter in Washington, D.C., who reports on happenings at the White House.
Personal Life, Parents and Family Details :
- Rebecca is originally from New York.
- She was born in 1991 to parents Florian (mother) and Pamela Katz (father). She spent her childhood in New York and has a sister, Louisa, who is a writer.
- Rebecca’s father, Florian Katz is a cinematographer who has worked on many famous films, including The Devil Wears Prada and Marley and Me. Florian had followed in his father’s footsteps.
- The famous German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus was Rebecca’s grandfather. Michael is best known for working on films like Goodfellas, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Gangs of New York. He received multiple nominations for the Best Cinematography category in various award ceremonies and even won several of them for many of his earlier films.
- Rebecca’s mother Pamela Katz is an American screenwriter and novelist and often collaborates with Margarethe von Trotta. Pamela is also the author of the 2015 book The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink.
- She has a sister, Louisa Ballhaus, who is working with SHE Media as a Staff Entertainment Writer. Previously, she was employed with the content developer Smartly, an online education platform that offers courses on difficult subjects that are made easy to understand. Louisa has also worked for other outlets like Bustle Digital Group and Betches Media, where she produced articles covering entertainment news, health/wellness, and dating.
- Rebecca Ballhaus is not married and has no children. She currently resides in Washington D.C.
Education : Qualifications, High School & College Info
- Rebecca attended the Berkeley Carroll High School in New York City. While in the tenth grade, she was a peer-tutor to her fellow classmates. She graduated in 2009.
- After finishing high school, she went on to study at Brown University, a private university. Ballhaus worked on the school’s newspaper ‘Brown Daily Herald’ (as a Managing Editor and Vice President), as well as the Ivy Film Festival. She graduated in 2013 with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science.
Career, Job, Salary and Net Worth :
- While studying, Rebecca was an intern at The Huffington Post in 2011, writing articles for the Travel and Styles section. In a short span of four months, she wrote over 60 articles. She returned in 2012, this time interning in the Media and Crime/Weird News section for three months.
- In 2013, after she graduated from Brown University, she began working at the Wall Street Journal. She started as an intern but quickly moved up the ranks to become a full-time reporter. She writes stories about the White House from a political and financial standpoint.
- Moreover, Rebecca covered the 2016 Presidential Campaign. She mainly reported financial aspects of the election. Her reports on Stormy Daniels earned her a Pulitzer Prize. As of 2020, she is still working at the Wall Street Journal.
Interesting Facts, Height and Trivia :
- Interestingly, aside from her career, Rebecca was once a hair model for a DIY hair-braiding step-by-step guide. Even more intriguing was that this guide could only be found on Chinese websites, although from pictures it seemed that the hairdresser was an African-American.
- American composer and pianist John Musto composed a song named “love is a place” in celebration of the birth of Rebecca Ballhaus, using lyrics from E.E. Cummings Complete Poems.
- A state senator once sent Rebecca an invitation to marry him through LinkedIn!
- She speaks four languages: English, German, Italian, and French.
Controversy :
- In May 2017, Ballhaus sent out a link to her co-worker’s, Carol Lee’s article. The article was about Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emigrants pledging money to help women entrepreneurs. The money was somewhere in the range of $100,000.
- When Ballhaus tweeted about the article, she made some grievous errors in her statements about it. She claimed that the money was sent to Ivanka Trump alone, not the World Bank (where it had actually been sent). She claimed that both countries’ donations were essentially saying that the money had been gotten illegally.
- Rebecca’s tweets went viral (retweeted more than 10,000 times) and reporters from other newspapers began citing it, using the same wording. Eventually, it was uncovered that the news story was fake. Ballhaus received some flak for it.
