WSJ reporter Cooper moves to beverage and tobacco beat

Laura Cooper

Wall Street Journal reporter Laura Cooper has moved to the beverage and tobacco beat.

She has been covering private equity and mergers and acquisitions for the last two-and-a-half years.

Before joining the deals team, Cooper was a reporter for WSJ Pro Private Equity, where she regularly broke news involving private-equity deals, fundraising and trends impacting the industry. She previously focused primarily on healthcare and technology.

Cooper covered healthcare M&A at the Deal and Mergermarket before joining the Journal. She also reported on economics at Japan’s largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun. Her journalism career began in the Hamptons at the Southampton Press: Western Edition.

She has an undergraduate degree from Stony Brook University on Long Island, where she studied journalism and political science.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.