Complete Story
08/10/2018
Long-time Akron Beacon-Journal journalist Sallie Cook passes away
Sallie Cook, a no-nonsense former newspaper reporter who passed along her love for journalism to her youngest son, GeekWire co-founder John Cook, died Wednesday in Wooster, Ohio, after a long illness. She was 76.
A retired courts, cops and government correspondent for the Akron Beacon-Journal, Sallie was a tenacious, good-humored, bridge-playing Democrat whose upbeat personality and likability made her a civic and journalistic force in her 27,000-person Northeastern Ohio town.
She loved a good story, as a reporter and reader, and made a habit of emailing GeekWire staffers quick notes of encouragement when she liked something they wrote. She was partial to good shoe-leather reporting, often praising reporters for getting out of the office to track down a source or a key piece of information.
“Good job, Taylor. Keep digging,” she wrote to reporter Taylor Soper in 2013, after he found what was then the secret location of Apple’s Seattle engineering office.
“OK, now you know you’ve made it when you are getting praise from Sallie,” John told Taylor at the time. He explained with admiration that his mom “still gives me crap on poorly-written leads, or not getting enough sourcing in my stories (got one of those earlier this month).”
