New Top Editor of Daily News in N.Y. Dies at 48
John Cotter, recently named managing editor of the New York Daily News, died Friday of a heart attack. He was 48.
Cotter’s appointment as managing editor of the News was announced last weekend. He was to begin work there Monday.
The News hired Cotter from the New York Post, where he had been metropolitan editor since 1989. Previously, he had worked as metropolitan editor at New York Newsday in 1986-87.
He started with the Associated Press in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1968 and was transferred to the Philadelphia bureau in 1970. Later that year, he was sent to New York, where he worked on the general desk, the main national news desk and eventually became the news service’s enterprise editor.
Cotter left the Associated Press in 1974 and became an investigative reporter at the News, producing a four-part report on religious cult recruiting practices.
During the next decade, he worked for various periods at Reuters, the Post and Women’s World magazine, where he was senior editor.
Survivors include his wife, Ann; daughters Courtney and Megan; a son, Gavin, and his mother, Ann Hoffman Cotter.
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