During her more than four decades of reporting, Jacobs has covered several of the world's major news events including the war in Bosnia, the Persian Gulf conflict and the Oklahoma City bombing. Moved by a lifelong interest in Cuba, Jacobs has written about developments there beginning with the Special Period in the 1990s and later while working as a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Her first book was The Other Barack, a biography of President Barack Obama's brilliant and self-destructive father. Her latest book, Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson, tells the story of the first Black woman to be the Number One tennis player in the world set against the turbulent racial history of America at mid-century.

Jacobs worked for the Globe for twenty-eight years. During that time she covered national and local news and also worked for the Globe Magazine. Previously she worked for the Burlington Free Press in Vermont and the Raleigh News & Observer in North Carolina. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize along with the Globe newsroom staff in 2014 for coverage of the marathon bombings.

Raised in Baltimore, Jacobs comes from a long line of Maryland writers. Her father was a columnist and editorial page editor at the Baltimore Evening Sun while her great great grandfather was the editor of the Harford Democrat in Harford, Maryland. Jacobs attended Hampshire College and received a Masters in writing from Johns Hopkins University. She lives outside Boston with her family’s grumpy cat and yoga-loving dog.