COUGHLIN, DANIEL FRANCIS "DAN" (17 September 1938-6 October 2024) was an award-winning sportswriter and broadcast journalist who worked at the PLAIN DEALER and WJW in Cleveland.
Born to Arthur Coughlin and Ruth Strain in COLLINWOOD, he grew up in LAKEWOOD. It was there that Coughlin graduated from the St. Edward High School (Class of 1956) . He then attended the University of Notre Dame and served a two-year enlistment in the U.S. Army.
Interested in writing from a young age, Coughlin applied to work a newspaper job in St. Louis, Missouri after discharge. When his November 22, 1963, interview was cut short by the news of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, he returned home to Cleveland. He soon secured a job at the Plain Dealer writing about high school sports in 1964. During his tenure with the paper, he covered various sports events such as boxing matches, soccer games, and car races. He served as the head writer covering the Cleveland Indians (now CLEVELAND GUARDIANS) baseball stories for two years while also working as the backup beat writer for the CLEVELAND BROWNS and CLEVELAND CAVALIERS football and basketball teams. From 1981-1982, he was president of the PRESS CLUB OF CLEVELAND. In 1982 Coughlin took on the sports columnist position at the CLEVELAND PRESS. The closing of the Press ten weeks later left him without a job.
Coughlin viewed this setback as an opportunity to bring his commentary to new media . He took a temporary job on a WHK radio show before transitioning in 1983 to television on WJW’s Fox 8 News. The SportsChannel Ohio also employed him as the play-by-play announcer for the then- Indians during the 1990 season. Just as he did as a print journalist, Coughlin covered a variety of sports on television. He moved through various phases of semi-retirement throughout the 2010s but frequently came back on Fox 8’s Friday Night Touchdown to end his career the way he started it: covering high school football games.
The last part of Coughlin’s career may have focused on television, but that did not distance the veteran journalist from his true passion for writing. Newspapers around Northeast Ohio published special stories he wrote for local audiences. He also authored four books between 2011 and 2018 recalling humorous experiences he had as a sportswriter.
Coughlin received numerous awards for his career and volunteer work. On top of being twice named Ohio Sportswriter of the Year, he was a 1996 inductee of the CLEVELAND JOURNALISM HALL OF FAME and a 2017 inductee of the GREATER CLEVELAND SPORTS HALL OF FAME. St. Edward honored their distinguished alumni with numerous awards. The Irish American Archives Society also presented him with their WALKS OF LIFE AWARD in 2013.
In 1980, Coughlin married his wife Madelyn after the two met at the wake of a mutual friend. Their marriage lasted until “Maddy’s” 2022 death, and they welcomed four children: Joseph, John, Michael, and Mary Jeffery. Dan Coughlin died on October 6, 2024, in his ROCKY RIVER home and is buried in Lakewood Park Cemetery.
Daniel Brennan