Jeff Cohen named NPF editor of the year

Word reaches us that Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen has been named Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation.

Here is an excerpt from the organization's announcement:

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.

Some of us who actually read the newspaper carefully on a daily basis can't help but wonder about that praise of the features and sports sections (or for that matter, the irony of praising the HPD crime lab reporting by Steve McVicker, who is no longer with the newspaper due to the latest round of layoffs); but then again, we aren't the sorts of pros who determine these sorts of awards. Under Cohen's leadership, though, there is no doubt that the newspaper has stressed its online presence (and breaking news online), and it has also reworked its Austin bureau in a sensible way -- both positives.

The awards ceremony will apparently take place in February in Washington, D.C. We hope that the weather allows the editor a good round of golf while he's in the D.C. area (on the NPF's dime!). Maybe Julie Mason can even liveblog the awards ceremony, and give her boss the sort of treatment she regularly gives other important world leaders!

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/20/07 09:36 AM | Print |

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