Riley was born in Buffalo, New York, and earned a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His first jobs in journalism were for the Buffalo News and USA Today. He joined The Wall Street Journal in 1994 as a copyreader on the nationalnews desk in New York. In April 1996, he was named to the newly created position of editorial interactive editor, and joined the editorial board in 2005. In 2008, he wrote Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders, which he promoted on Colbert Report and other venues. In 2014, Riley published Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed. The book was praised by Thomas Sowell of National Review, who wrote "Pick up a copy and open pages at random to see how the author annihilates nonsense." The New York Times Book Review critic Orlando Patterson, however, described one chapter as "thoroughly misinformed not only trots out the usual inaccuracies about hip hop's influence but, failing to recognize the diversity of African-American cultures, proceeds to libel the entire group". In his 2017 book False Black Power?, Riley champions economic success as a more important strategy for the empowerment of black people compared to political leadership. According to Salon, "The American left should start paying attention to The Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley. His name is on the rise". On 25 November 2018, on ABC's 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos,' Riley stated, "This has been in the democratic for decades: paint the republican candidate as racist..." Riley continued, "I think there is a difference between hanging and lynching..." This comment was made in defense of a controversial statement Mississippi Senatorial candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith made while praising a cattle rancher. Hyde-Smith's statement that "If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row." was met with criticism because she was campaigning against former congressman Mike Espy, who is an African American.
Personal life
Riley married his wife Naomi Schaefer Riley, also a journalist, in 2004. They currently reside in New York with their three children.
