Remembering Two Movers and Shakers from Atlanta
Bill Shipp helped make my Olympic journey possible. Bob Cohn was one of the brilliant figures I would joyfully encounter on the journey.
Both men died hours apart from one another this month. Shipp, 89, lived in the Atlanta suburb Cobb County. Cohn was 88, residing in Tuscaloosa, Alabama for just over a year after decades in Atlanta.
Shipp was the quintessential Georgia newspaper reporter who refused to be pushed around. He was fired as editor of the University of Georgia newspaper Red and Black when he refused to back down on reporting the integration of the university. Offered a job in Atlanta, Shipp spent 30 years with the Atlanta Journal and Constitution newspapers, establishing himself as a preeminent expert on Georgia politics.
He left the paper in 1988 to launch Bill Shipp’s Georgia, a biweekly review of state politics in newsletter form, mailed to subscribers.
Ever a good eye for talent, Shipp had the foresight to inquire whether I might be interested in writing a column covering preparations for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. That was in 1992 as I went to Barcelona for my first Games as a credentialed journalist.
I covered the struggles over plans to build a new stadium, threats to boycott due to an anti-gay ordinance adopted in Cobb county, the savage attacks on Atlanta’s scorned mascot Izzy.
Every week Shipp would be on the telephone with me to go over things. He had great sources in government whose doors he was able to open for me. Always a skeptic, he had doubts about how well Atlanta would stage the Olympics.
In 1995 as my work on the Olympic beat expanded to an international scope, Shipp gave me his blessings to take the Hula Report, as it was known, and turn it into a separate publication under my ownership. From then on, the newsletter was the product of this writer and the many colleagues who would be a part of our team through the next 25 years. In 1996, The Hula Report was rebranded as Around the Rings, which is now under the wing of Infobae, the Buenos Aires-based content platform, since 2021.
Shipp retired from the newsletter business in 2000. He is a member of the Atlanta Press Club Hall of Fame.
A funeral is scheduled for July 14 in Marietta, Ga.
Thank you, Bill Shipp.
Bob Cohn was a brash Brooklyn born kid when he ended up in the deep south in the 1960s, a newspaperman of the same era as Shipp. But Cohn saw greater opportunity in public relations and opened shop in Atlanta in 1971. His personality and hustle boosted the firm toward a portfolio of blue-chip clients, including Coca-Cola. The firm became a worldwide player as Cohn and Wolfe, known today as Burson, Cohn & Wolfe.
Cohn’s passion for the Olympics led him to convince Coke in 1980 that the company should invest in pin trading centers for the Games. He was involved with marketing plans for torch relays sponsored by Coke.
Along with the professional angle, the Olympics also turned Cohn into one of the top collectors of memorabilia, At one time he assembled a collection of Olympic torches, now part of the Olympic collection of the Atlanta History Center.
Cohn was an avid pin collector, delighting in swapping to obtain pins from each national Olympic committee at a Games. He wore a pin vest and waded into the crowds at the Games to score his treasures, mounted on huge framed displays at his home.
Cohn also served as a member of the Metropolitan Atlanta Olympic Games Authority from 1992 to 1997. MAOGA was an oversight board established by the state of Georgia to make sure the 1996 Olympics did not leave a deficit. The MAOGA board was successful in that mission. A close friend of Bill Shipp, George Berry, was chair of the watchdog group, incidentally.
Coincidentally this week, another former member of the MAOGA board died. Marvin Arrington Sr. was Atlanta City Council president during the lead up to the ’96 Games. He was 82.
A memorial is planned for Cohn August 5 in Atlanta.