Portfolio hires another from the WSJ

Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, which will publish its first issue in April 2007, has hired away another top-notch business journalist, and once again the new hire is coming from The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post reports.

Keith Kelly wrote, “Elsewhere in the Condé Nast constellation, Joanne Lipman is back on a hiring streak at the new financial magazine Condé Nast Portfolio.

“She just poached Laurie P. Cohen, a 23-year veteran of The Wall Street Journal, who will join the staff as a senior writer and investigative reporter.

“Cohen in her storied career was once sued along with James Stewart for stories that eventually became the basis of the best-selling ‘Den of Thieves.’

“The suit was tossed out back in the days when journalists seemed to be considered good guys in the eyes of the law.

“Even this week, Cohen had a lengthy page one lead in the Journal, with Monday’s ‘Seeking an Edge, Big Investors Turn to Network of Informants.’

“It’s considered a big blow to the WSJ to lose her.”

Read more here.

Cohen transferred to the Journal’s New York bureau in May 1986 to cover mergers and acquisitions. In January 1988, she began covering the advertising industry, and in May 1988, she moved to the legal beat. She became a senior markets reporter with the Journal’s Money & Investing group in January 1991, moved to general assignment reporting in December 1993 and was named a senior special writer in March 1994.

In 2003, Cohen was a member of a team of Journal reporters awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting for a series of stories that exposed corporate scandals, elucidated them and brought them to life in compelling narratives.

In 1996, she was a member of two Journal reporting teams that won awards. One team won a Sigma Delta Chi award for public service from the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the tobacco industry. The second team received the award for best reporting in the minority issues category in a contest sponsored by the Deadline Club, the New York City Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Cohen received the 1995 Front Page Award for investigative reporting for her page-one story, “Dirty Dozen?” The story focused on how criminals sometimes attempt to purchase freedom through jury tampering.