Laurie Cohen is a senior special writer in the New York bureau of The Wall Street Journal.  She is an investigative reporter, writing articles for the Journal’s front page and for the Money & Investing section. 

Ms. Cohen worked for the New York Times as a news clerk on the foreign desk before joining the Dallas bureau of the Journal as a reporter in 1983.  She 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, Ms. 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. Ms. 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.  Ms. Cohen and Journal reporter Alix Freedman received the 1993 Front Page Award for specialized writing from the Newswomen's Club of New York for their article, "Smoke and Mirrors: How Cigarette Makers Keep Health Question 'Open' Year After Year."

Born in New York City, Ms. Cohen graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in political science and Chinese from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  She has master's degrees in political science and journalism from Columbia University.