NY Times taps Cochrane to cover the South, names Robertson Mid-Atlantic bureau chief

The following was sent out from The New York Times’ National editor Jia Lynn Yang, deputy National editor Monica Davey and assistant National editor Abby Goodnough:

As we continue to extend our coverage of the country, we have two exciting announcements.

First, we are thrilled to share that Emily Cochrane will join Rick Rojas in covering one of the National desk’s newsiest regions, the South.

Emily joins us from the Washington bureau, where she has reported tirelessly on Congress since November 2018. Among other things, Emily led the bureau’s coverage of government spending, including the annual scramble to keep the government open, the American Rescue Plan and other pandemic aid packages, the infrastructure bill, and most recently the Inflation Reduction Act. One day in December, she achieved an exceedingly rare feat at The Times: bylines on three front-page stories, all above the fold.

We are especially eager for Emily to bring her expertise covering government policy and spending, and the issues and debates that shape them, to her coverage of states, counties, cities and towns. She’ll start her new job on Feb. 13.

In addition to helping cover the Southern states, Emily will occasionally dip into Kentucky and Ohio, lending a hand to Campbell Robertson, who is now based in Washington as our Mid-Atlantic bureau chief.

Campbell has done it all at The Times, from covering Broadway to the war in Iraq and then joining National in 2009 to cover the South based in New Orleans. In 2017 he moved to Pittsburgh, where he often cataloged the way that national politics have galvanized Americans in all corners — including the George Floyd protests in 2020 that extended even to small-town America, school board fights in the suburbs, and why Black Americans were leaving white-majority evangelical churches.

Campbell worked with The Daily in 2021 to produce a memorable two-part series on how fights over masking and teaching race in schools had consumed Bucks County, Pa., a critical swing region.

Please join us in congratulating both Emily and Campbell.