Pickler was hired by the
Detroit offices of the
Associated Press in 1998 shortly after graduating from
Michigan State University. AP promoted Pickler to cover national political issues in December 2002. She was the lead reporter covering the Democratic Party candidates in the
2004 United States Presidential Election. Pickler was criticized by liberal bloggers for her critical coverage, which they called "Nit Picklering," although candidate
Howard Dean praised her in his book as one of a few "outstanding journalists" in a chapter criticizing media coverage of his candidacy overall. After that election, Pickler worked as a
White House correspondent until September 2006, leaving to cover national politics, including the
2008 United States Presidential Election.
President Bush bid her farewell personally, saying: "Nedra, baby, I’m gonna miss you. I’m sad you’re leaving." In January 2007, she wrote an article investigating
Senator Barack Obama's childhood education in
Indonesia. Based on interviews with some of Obama's childhood friends and teachers, she reported that, contrary to some rumors reported from
Insight on the News then in circulation in
Fox News and
The New York Times, Obama had been educated in
Roman Catholic and
public schools. On March 27, 2007, Pickler wrote that Democratic presidential candidate Obama (who had
declared his candidacy February 10) had "delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country" in his campaign up to that point. In his 2020 autobiography, Obama cited the "painful headline Is Obama All Style and Little Substance?" as the result of his head being "crammed with too many facts and too few answers" at that point in the campaign.
University of Texas at Austin head football coach
Mack Brown once scolded Pickler when she tried to ask Obama a question during a football stadium tour. At a press conference after he won the 2008 election, Obama called on Pickler to pose the first question to him as president-elect. She returned to the White House to cover his presidency before resigning from the AP in 2015 to work as a managing director at
The Glover Park Group. ==References==