Jeff Cohen joined the Houston Chronicle in June 2002 as executive vice president and editor, overseeing the newspaper’s English and Spanish editions and its Web site, chron.com.
Under his leadership, each section of the paper has seen a marked change. There is a greater emphasis on lively, engaging writing and a tighter focus on local topical issues as well as the broad themes that define the nation’s fourth largest city. During his tenure, the features and sports sections have been recognized by their peers as among the best in the country. The newspaper, along with its accompanying Web site, has been redesigned top to bottom. It has added a sister Spanish-language weekly, La Voz, and successfully launched niche publications in fashion and health.
Cohen directed the Chronicle’s coverage of some of the biggest news events in Houston’s recent history: hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Enron trials, the space shuttle Columbia disaster and a scandal in the police department’s DNA lab that resulted in the release from prison of three innocent men.
Cohen also has embraced the digital revolution. Over the last five years, chron.com has grown into one of the top newspaper Web sites for breaking news, video features, staff and reader blogs and overall reader interaction. The site’s animated editorial cartoons have attracted national attention and made the newspaper’s cartoonist a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007.
Cohen is the 10th editor of the Chronicle, which was founded in 1901. He came to the Chronicle from a fellow Hearst newspaper, the Times Union in Albany, N.Y. The state’s editors named the Times Union the best New York newspaper in its circulation class for three of his last four years in Albany. He also worked at Hearst's corporate headquarters in New York, where he was a special projects editor for new media.
Cohen joined the Hearst Corporation in 1976 as a sportswriter at the San Antonio Light. Among his beats was the National Basketball Association’s Spurs. He won awards in feature writing, including one for best story in Texas for an investigative series on cockfighting. Cohen became the managing editor of the Light in 1989.
Cohen grew up in Houston, so his appointment as editor of the Chronicle represented a homecoming for the Bellaire High School graduate. He received his journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin and today serves as president of UT’s College of Communication Advisory Council.
Cohen was a fellow in the Multicultural Management Program at the University of Missouri School and at the Newspaper Management Center at Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He has served as a Pulitzer Prize juror four times.
