William “Bill” Shipp, a journalist whose passion for scoops and sometimes-scorching criticism of politicians fueled his coverage of Georgia for more than 50 years, died Saturday at age 89.
No cause of death was released.
Shipp, born in Marietta in 1933, first gained public notice in 1953 as an editor of the University of Georgia’s student newspaper, The Red and Black, writing articles criticizing then-Gov. Herman Talmadge and the university system regents, including Augusta political kingpin Roy Harris, for blocking the admission of Black applicant Horace Ward to the university’s law school.
Politicians and administrators sought to cut the paper’s funding, censor its stories and fire Shipp and fellow editor Walker Lundy. Both resigned, with Shipp entering the U.S. Army.
“They suggested I probably needed to quit The Red and Black,” Shipp said in a videotaped interview with the Atlanta Press Club, which he helped found.
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Ward later became a state legislator and the first Black federal judge named to the bench in northern Georgia.
Shipp went to work for The Atlanta Constitution in 1956, saying he wanted to work for legendary editor Ralph McGill. He stayed with the Constitution, and later The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through 1987.
During that time, Shipp covered the Civil Rights Movement, became state editor managing a network of 100 correspondents and became one of the state’s premier political reporters. It was Shipp, for example, who first reported that Jimmy Carter planned to run for president, news that was initially met with disbelief even in Georgia.
Shipp called Carter “a brilliant politician” in a 2013 oral history interview with the University of Georgia, although he suggested that Carter’s stances against incumbent Carl Sanders in the 1970s governor’s race may have been hypocritical — with Carter pretending to be a populist and less liberal on race.
Shipp…
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