Ann Cooper

BS Home Economics Journalism ’71
New York, N.Y.

More than 15 years later, people still remember the voice of journalist Ann Cooper, whose reporting from Moscow on National Public Radio shared a tale that changed the world. Today, the experience of having been immersed in the Soviet Union’s final days remains a highlight of Cooper’s distinguished and diverse journalism career.

This summer, Cooper undertook a new challenge when she accepted the position of director of the broadcast department at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. It’s only the latest stop on a path that began at the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal’s food department—one of the few places a woman in the early 1970s could get a start in reporting, Cooper notes. But once she got a chance, the former Iowa State Daily staffer’s career took flight. She quickly moved on to consumer reporting and feature writing, eventually discovering her true passion in Washington. After gaining significant government reporting experience, Cooper moved into the broadcasting field as one of NPR’s foreign correspondents. It was her experiences in Moscow as part of that job which inspired her to take on the position she has held for the past eight years: executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “In Russia, I saw the tremendous courage of journalists,” Cooper says. “It made me want to do what I could to defend journalists in other countries, who work without the press freedom protections that are a hallmark of our American democracy.”

Over the years, Cooper has earned numerous professional honors, including ISU’s James W. Schwartz Award, the Dupont-Columbia Award for excellence in broadcast journalism, the Edward R. Murrow Fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Ottaway Fellowship from the State University of New York, New Paltz. She is an annual member of the ISU Alumni Association and has been involved with ISU’s Greenlee School Advisory Council. She and her husband, Larry Heinzerling, and son, Tom Keller, reside in New York.