Leon “Lee” Cohn, news reporter and editor, dies at 82

Leon “Lee” Cohn passed away on March 19, 2012, at the Washington Home’s hospice from complications due to Lymphoma. His family, including his three children, was by his side. Lee’s passion for journalism became evident as early as grade school, when he and his friend produced a school newspaper, and never ebbed. He was a distinguished editor of his high school paper and of the Syracuse Daily Orange and upon college graduation became the one-man editorial staff for West Virginia’s weekly, the Clarksburg News. His career took root as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and for the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal and as editor of Reporting on Governments and associate editor of the Kiplinger Washington Letter, his last job, which he held for 12 years before retiring in 1992. By far his favorite job, though, was reporter and news analyst on the national staff of the Washington Star, where he covered the economy from 1957-1979.