Audrey Cooper

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Audrey Cooper is editor-in-chief of The Banner, Maryland’s largest news organization and one of the largest nonprofit newsrooms in the United States.   At a time when local newsrooms have been gutted or closed across the country, Audrey has earned a national reputation for repeatedly rebuilding legacy outlets into financially resilient, multiplatform news organizations rooted in public service journalism.   Before joining The Banner, Audrey served as senior vice president of news at New York Public Radio. There, she integrated the WNYC radio operation and the digital-native site Gothamist, transforming them into a unified journalism powerhouse. Under her leadership, the newsroom was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for the first time and won the prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for investigative reporting.   Prior to that, Audrey spent most of her career at the San Francisco Chronicle, starting as an assistant city editor and ultimately becoming the youngest woman ever named editor-in-chief of a major American newspaper. As top editor, she helped lead a financial turnaround and a sweeping digital reinvention, positioning the Chronicle as a national leader in innovation and reader-focused journalism. The newsroom earned repeated honors as California’s best newspaper and won nearly every major national reporting award. She is especially proud of founding the SF Homeless Project, a groundbreaking collaborative reporting model that has since been replicated in newsrooms around the world.