Bob Cohn

Notable work and positions

The Baltimore Banner - Chief Executive Officer (2024-present)
The Economist - President and Managing Director
The Atlantic - President (2014-2019); Digital Editorial Director (2009-2014)

Biography

Bob Cohn is a journalist and media executive who became CEO of The Baltimore Banner in February 2024. A Chicago native, he graduated from Stanford University and holds a Master's in the Study of Law from Yale Law School, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow. He began his journalism career as a Washington, D.C., correspondent for Newsweek, covering the Supreme Court, the Justice Department, the FBI and the Clinton White House over ten years; his coverage of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation process won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. He was editor and publisher of Stanford magazine in the late 1990s, executive editor of the dot-com-era newsweekly The Industry Standard, and executive editor of Wired for eight years, during which the magazine won six National Magazine Awards including General Excellence in 2005, 2007 and 2009. He joined The Atlantic in January 2009 as digital editorial director, building and managing TheAtlantic.com, The Wire and CityLab and growing the site's audience tenfold; TheAtlantic.com won a National Magazine Award for Best Website in 2013. He was named president of The Atlantic in 2014, leading the 160-year-old magazine to record revenues, profits and audience, and led the executive team through the 2017 sale of a majority stake to Emerson Collective; he was named Adweek's Publishing Executive of the Year in 2018. He then served as president and managing director of The Economist before becoming CEO of The Baltimore Banner, a Maryland digital news publication launched in 2022, which grew revenue by 40 percent and subscribers by 57 percent in 2024, reaching 67,000 paid subscribers by summer 2025, and expanded coverage into Montgomery County under his leadership.