Georgia Recorder editor John McCosh to retire after decades-long career

No good journalist ever wants to be part of the story, but today’s story is all about celebrating Georgia Recorder Editor-in-Chief John McCosh, whether he likes it or not.

At the end of the month, the Recorder will bid a fond farewell to the guy who gives voice to our daily newsletter, ensures all of our stories make sense and livens up slow news days with quips and anecdotes.

McCosh is retiring after a long and distinguished career in the news and public affairs business that began when he was a wee lad of 10, delivering papers for The Miami News, the city’s evening paper. One of his customers was then-President Richard Nixon’s waterfront retreat in Key Biscayne, known as the winter White House.

Little McCosh’s parents were constant newspaper readers and encouraged the budding reporter to ask questions about the forces that shaped his world. 

“Because Nixon was on the island where I grew up, there were constantly marches to protest all kinds of federal policies,” McCosh said. “I was aware that teenagers, just a little older than I was, were being drafted to go fight in Vietnam. And I knew some who didn’t come back. So I was pretty engaged for a kid.”

McCosh found he was just as good at writing stories as he was at tossing them onto doorsteps. After his family moved to Georgia, he joined his high school paper; was editor for the paper at DeKalb Community College, which is now Perimeter College at Georgia State University, and wrote for the Georgia State Signal. 

He took a break from college to start his first paid writing job at Neighbor Newspapers, starting out as a sports writer for the Clayton Neighbor and later covering the Henry County Commission for the Henry Neighbor. It was good experience, but didn’t leave him with much money in his pocket.

“I was making $160 a week, I was living at home, and I could barely support myself because I was living in Stone Mountain, so I was driving every day from Stone Mountain to Stockbridge, and I could barely support a car for what I was making,” he said.

McCosh finished up his bachelor’s degree and started at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the bottom of the corporate ladder.

“I was a copy carrier, but it was basically an errand runner. I would go get the managing editor coffee, and I think the most degrading errand was to go take his dry cleaning and drop it off. It wasn’t even ‘pick up the clean stuff,’ it was ‘drop off the dirty stuff,’” he said with a laugh.

McCosh was soon promoted to clerk on the business desk, and then to reporter for the AJC’s weekly North Fulton Extra, covering local city and county governments. The work was good, but he had bigger goals.

“I got frustrated because it was clear that that was where the ceiling was, that I was going to be thought of as a junior reporter unless I did something different,” he said.

After a brief stint doing public relations at BellSouth Mobility, McCosh moved to the Atlanta Business Chronicle to cover commercial real estate. Part of the job was going down to the courthouse and looking at new deed filings to figure out what the wheelers and dealers were up to.

“It was a revelation to me that you could use public records to find out stuff that people wouldn’t tell you over the phone, that you could look up these deeds, and I guess there still is a Southern sensibility. You don’t talk about how much things cost, but this — I didn’t need anybody’s permission to tell them how much somebody just paid for a piece of property, and in fact I could use it as leverage in interviews,” he said.

McCosh remembered one major scoop in the late ‘80s when he learned Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo had plans to buy what was then the tallest building in Atlanta, One Atlantic Center in Midtown, then called IBM Tower. 

About a month after he published that story, the AJC called him up and recruited him to help beef up their business coverage. The former junior reporter from the outer ‘burbs would soon have a spot in the paper’s downtown office. 

After more than a decade at the paper as a reporter and editor, McCosh worked several jobs in PR and public affairs, including providing communications at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, but when a family member in Knoxville experienced a health crisis, he spent about a year up there helping out while working freelance.

Back in Atlanta and looking for a new full-time gig, he heard about a growing nonprofit news network that became States Newsroom, which then had outlets in about a dozen states, from an old AJC friend. Around the same time, States Newsroom Publisher and CEO Chris Fitzsimon poked around looking to find someone to establish a Georgia foothold.

A series of meetings turned into a handshake at Atlanta’s South City Kitchen, and, in August 2019, the Georgia Recorder was born. 

“This was pretty incredible for someone who was looking for an opportunity to get back in the news business, to have somebody say, ‘OK, here are resources, go create a news outlet, and go hire a staff, and you’ll need some computers, so go buy some of those, and we believe in the newsroom concept, so go lease an office, and if you need help, we’ll help you, but if you can do it yourself, find your own broker, go do that,’” McCosh said. 

“This is certainly a great way to cap off a long run doing a job that – I don’t want to say I would have done it for nothing – but there are definitely days where I think ‘I can’t believe I get paid for doing this,’” he added.

Today, States Newsroom has a nationwide presence, running or partnering with news outlets in every state, and it is now the country’s largest nonprofit, state-focused news organization. As one of States Newsroom’s 39 state outlets, the Georgia Recorder relies entirely on the support of readers and donors, and its work is available to anyone to read for free. 

Georgia Recorder: the Next Generation

McCosh is passing the torch to another Georgia Recorder day one-er, Deputy Editor Jill Nolin. 

Nolin is a south Alabama native who has more than 20 years of experience in journalism, including more than 10 covering Georgia politics and policy. Over the last six years, she’s regularly been the one to step in for McCosh during vacations, doctor’s appointments and the like.

She lives in Atlanta with her partner, Brianne, and their two dogs, Edie and Lottie, their cat Malachi, four chickens named after the women from the sitcom “Abbott Elementary,” and thousands of nameless bees. 

Nolin said readers will continue to see hard-hitting news and in-depth coverage of statewide issues from the Recorder, and she’s looking forward to building on McCosh’s legacy.

“We’ll miss John and his daily witticisms and snark, but we’re grateful for the strong foundation that he helped to build for the Recorder as we move into the next chapter,” she said.

McCosh says he’ll use some of his extra free time to support journalism through the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, where he serves on the board, but he is also looking forward to seeing the world. He’ll celebrate his retirement watching a ball game in Pittsburgh with his brother, and a Europe trip and an Alaska cruise are also on his to-do list.

“I know that I leave the Recorder in good hands,” he said. “When people give me a compliment about how much they enjoy the Georgia Recorder, I am quick to deflect and say I hire well. We have a crew that’s been together since March 2020, with the baptism by fire that that date implies, and so I have every confidence that things will only improve.”