Bob Cohn

Bob Cohn is the editorial director of TheAtlantic.com, the digital side of The Atlantic. He oversees a team of writers, editors, designers, and bloggers.

Prior to joining TheAtlantic.com in January 2009, Cohn was for eight years the executive editor of Wired Magazine. He oversaw all editorial aspects of the magazine, helping to supervise a staff of 40 journalists and dozens of freelancers. Under his leadership, Wired was nominated seven times for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence and won the honor three times.

For nearly two years during the dot-com boom, Cohn was executive editor at The Industry Standard, a newsweekly covering the Internet economy. He directed a staff of writers and editors, planned and edited cover stories, and was in charge of editorial special projects, including the company’s extensions into television, radio, international publishing, and new domestic magazines. During the late ’90s, he worked four years as editor and, later, publisher of Stanford magazine, and as editorial director of the Stanford Alumni Association, overseeing the bimonthly magazine, the online department, electronic newsletters, and other communications programs.

Cohn began his journalism career at Newsweek, where he worked in the Washington bureau for 10 years. He served as the magazine’s legal affairs correspondent, with responsibility for the Supreme Court, the Justice Department, and the FBI, and later was named the magazine’s White House correspondent. He covered the presidency of Bill Clinton from 1993 to early 1996.

Cohn has won many national awards for his writing and editing. During his tenure at Wired, the magazine was nominated for 11 National Magazine Awards and won six, including the three citations for General Excellence. At Newsweek, where he shared in more than a dozen awards, he was honored with the American Bar Association’s prestigious Silver Gavel Award for coverage of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation process. At Stanford magazine, a story he wrote on the university’s affirmative action policies was named best article of the year in college magazines. The next year, Stanford was named the best university publication in the country by Folio magazine.

Cohn graduated from Stanford with high honors and later earned a master’s degree in the Study of Law from Yale Law School as a Ford Foundation Fellow. A native of Chicago, he lives with his wife and two daughters outside Washington, D.C.