NEW YORK: Ann Cooper, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, is leaving the organization to run the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism's broadcast department, according to a memo from CPJ chair Paul Steiger.
The memo, first posted on the Romenesko Web site Wednesday, says Cooper will keep the CPJ post she has held for eight years until the end of June.
"CPJ's very strong staff remains in place, and will continue its first-rate work in defense of press freedom around the world," Steiger wrote in the memo. "Ann has built the programmatic and financial strength of the organization, even as she has become an important public face and voice for the global effort to protect journalists from incarceration and physical violence."
Steiger also praised Cooper's efforts at building CPJ into a strong entity that "monitors press freedom conditions in over 100 countries, and each year its work helps hundreds of journalists facing jail, violent threats, censorship, or other harassment.
"Ann has helped the organization expand and strengthen its protective work, by hiring an international program network of field representatives, by creating a journalist assistance program that gives aid directly to journalists whose lives are threatened or who face onerous legal or medical bills, and by establishing a journalist security program that develops and shares expertise about reporting in conflict zones such as Iraq," Steiger added. "CPJ's journalist security handbook, first published in 2003, has become an indispensable guide, now available in Spanish and Arabic as well as English. The handbook, along with press freedom reports and the hundreds of news alerts and protest letters produced each year, now attract more than one million hits to CPJ's Web site each month."
Steiger wrote that CPJ's deputy director Joel Simon would serve as acting executive director after Cooper leaves if a permanent replacement is not found beforehand.
Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.
