Carrie Cochran is a Pulitzer Prize and national Emmy-winning project leader, filmmaker, journalist and writer. She was a national investigative producer for the Scripps News Washington Bureau from 2018 to late 2024, where she worked both in D.C. and remotely from the Cincinnati-area. While she always considered herself a journalist first, in 2021 she shifted away from shooting to focus as a project leader and reporter, instead collaborating with videographers and video editors. She is now an independent journalist, writer and producer, seeking impactful work.
Prior to joining Scripps, she worked for her hometown paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, for thirteen years as a reporter, still photographer, and videojournalist. In 2018, Cochran was part of the winning team of the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for her contributions to "Seven Days of Heroin." She was the lead producer, the lead editor and a cinematographer for the 30-minute documentary that was part of the winning entry, and was also the reporter and still photographer for several of the written vignettes. The documentary also won a National Murrow Award.
In 2023 and 2024, Cochran led a series of investigative reports in Flint, Mich. exposing the city and state's failure to finish the work of inspecting and replacing thousands of dangerous service lines that carry water into residents homes. As the producer and lead reporter, she led a team of data reporters, videographers, correspondents and video editors on the series, which earned a national news Emmy Award in the short-form investigative category
in 2024 and was an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award finalist. The reporting was cited in a federal judge's order holding the city in contempt of court, was followed by the mayor abruptly dropping his bid for Congress, led to a contractor working for free, and the state eventually taking over the project – agreeing to complete the work the series exposed was still left undone more than a decade after the crisis began.
Cochran was a lead reporters lead producer for "The Model City" – a 44-minute documentary and six-part podcast series. The project, which included rare interviews from inside the police department, exposed how the Louisville Metro Police Department's failure to reform endangered both citizens and officers. The film and podcast series takes the audience from 2016, when the White House chose Louisville to help lead the nation in police reform, up to the aftermath of the killing of Breonna Taylor in 2020. The podcast was a Peabody Award finalist in 2022, and won an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. The documentary won a National Headliner Award and a National Association for Black Journalists award in 2023.
At Scripps, her work also shaped federal legislation and led a multi-billion dollar company to overhaul its executive pay incentives.
In 2020, she and her colleagues were awarded the grand prize in the Robert F. Kennedy Human RIghts' Journalism Awards for her role in the documentary, "A Broken Trust." She was a co-director, co-producer, and a lead reporter, as well as the director of photography and editor, in the 48-minute film. The investigation examined how centuries of inequities and legal loopholes have not only left American Indian and Alaska Native women vulnerable to sexual assault, but also made it difficult, if not dangerous, to report their perpetrators. In March of 2021, the text component, originally published in USA Today in 2019, was entered into the Congressional Record in its entirety as part of the U.S. House of Representatives' debate on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
She and her two colleagues were the first to share the story of Jim Obergefell and John Arthur in 2013 at The Cincinnati Enquirer. Obergefell later became the lead plaintiff in the landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized gay marriage. She has also covered Hurricane Katrina, immigration in Mexico, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
Cochran was named among the top multimedia producers internationally as her portfolio of video work was recognized in the National Press Photographers Association's annual contest in 2016. Since 2013, she has received twelve Emmys for her video work from the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), which serves four states. Cochran was honored for her still photography as 2016's Ohio Photographer for the year (large market), by the Ohio News Photographers Association. She's won several writing and reporting awards, including Best Use of Public Records, Best Religion Reporting and Best Minority Affairs Reporting by the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists.
She has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times and USA Today and aired on PBS News Hour. Along with visuals, she has also been honored for her writing. In 2016, her work was also recognized as being the best video journalism in Gannett, Inc., which owned 109 properties at the time.
Cochran was an adjunct professor in the University of Cincinnati's journalism program for three semesters, until she moved to D.C. She was a mentor for the Scripps Howard Fellowship program and served on the Advisory Board for the Journalism Journeys Initiative, a joint program between the Google News Initiative and Scripps. In 2016, she was asked to join the board of Associated Press Photo Managers, representing the multimedia discipline. She served a two-year term on the Board of Governors of NATAS Ohio Valley (2014-2016), which covers parts of Ohio, parts of Indiana, all of West Virginia, and all of Kentucky. She also served on the Cincinnati ReelAbilities Film Festival local programming board.
She is a member of IRE, SPJ, NPPA and ONA and when she's not practicing journalism, she's reading, or enjoying the outdoors.
News
Scripps News named finalists for 2025 duPont-Columbia Awards; Scripps (Nov., 2024)
Scripps News wins national news Emmy Award for its investigation “Poisoned Water”; Scripps (Sept., 2024)
DOJ investigation into Louisville policing confirms what Scripps News found there; Scripps News (March, 2023)
Kentucky Center For Investigative Reporting Nominated for Peabody Award; KyCIR (April, 2022)
Newsy wins prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Award for ‘A Broken Trust’ investigation; Scripps (June, 2020)
The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes: The everyday horror of heroin overdoses; NPPA's News Photographer (May, 2018)
Behind Enquirer's heroin epic: "We wanted a normal week; It was terrible enough;" Columbia Journalism Review (September, 2017)
Enquirer journalists earn four regional Emmy awards (August, 2017)
Cochran brings home three more regional Emmys (August, 2016)
Cochran named Ohio Photographer of the year by the Ohio News Photographers Association (April 23, 2016)
Cochran mentioned among the top photojournalism multimedia producers by NPPA (March 23, 2016)
Cochran wins two Emmys (July 26, 2015)
Cochran's video of Obergefell & Arthur on tarmac part of New York Times' mini-documentary (starting at minute 3:24), 'How a Love Story Triumphed in Court' (July 26, 2015)
Cochran wins statewide honors for videos (April 18, 2015)