Marc Cooper is an American journalist, author, journalism professor and . He is a contributing editor to The Nation. He wrote the popular "Dissonance" column for LA Weekly from 2001 until November 2008. His writing has also appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, the Christian Science Monitor, Playboy and Rolling Stone. His translated work has been published in various European and Latin American publications including the French daily Liberation and the Mexico City-based dailies La Jornada and Uno Mas Uno. He has also been a television producer for PBS, CBS News, and the Christian Science Monitor. His radio reports have aired on NBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC. During the 2008 presidential campaign he worked as editorial coordinator of the Huffington Post's citizen-journalism project OffTheBus as well as a Senior Editor of the overall site.
Cooper was born in and grew up in Los Angeles. His career in journalism began in 1966 when he founded and edited an underground newspaper at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, California. In 1971, he was expelled from the California State University system for his antiwar activism by order of Governor Ronald Reagan.