Argetsinger is a native of
Alexandria, Virginia. She attended the
St. Agnes School, graduating in 1986, after which she attended the
University of Virginia, earning a degree in Political and Social Thought in 1990. Argetsinger was named an
Echols Scholar, an honors program for incoming students at the University of Virginia. She edited the school's weekly paper
The Declaration. Argetsinger started her journalism career in 1991 in the
Illinois/
Iowa Quad Cities, at the
Rock Island Argus and Moline Daily Dispatch. She joined
The Washington Post in December 1995 as a Metro staff writer in the paper's
Annapolis bureau, and later covered higher education. Just prior to her "Reliable Source" appointment in 2005, she covered the West Coast for the Post's National staff as
Los Angeles bureau chief. In September 2021, she published her first book,
There She Was, a history of the Miss America pageant, from Simon & Schuster's One Signal Publishers. ==References==