THE BARON

■ Leaning back into the future

■ Scenes from a marriage

■ Too soon for an obituary

■ News versus opinion

■ Eyes on the prize

■ Change is hard to handle

■ Editorial standards

■ Winners and losers

■ Moment of truth

■ Focus on news

■ A delicate matter

■ A circle unsquared, a line crossed, a reputation tarnished

■ Taking stock

■ Connections and camaraderie

■ Journalist safety, military accountability

■ Squeezing the genie back into the bottle

■ End of an era

■ Dealing with death

■ Looking forward, glancing back

MICHAEL REILLY
■ Journalism: the long and the short of it

STEVE SOMERVILLE
■ AlertNet RIP? Pride and optimism

MONIQUE VILLA
■ Reshaping the business of social change

PAUL HOLMES
■ Change for the better at Reuters

ANTHONY DE ROSA
■ News agencies must evolve or meet extinction

KEN DOCTOR
■ The newsonomics of Reuters’ Americanisation

PHILIP STONE
■ The US once again has two international news agencies; the UK now has none

■ Do we want commentary from our news agencies?

■ Are news agencies worth it?

JON SNOW
■ The golden age of journalism

DAVID SCHLESINGER
■ It's not stenography - and it isn't always nice

■ Tips for running a successful news agency

■ Reuters in 2010 and a look ahead to 2011

■ Our need to be in the midst of danger

■ Changing journalism; changing Reuters

DEVIN WENIG
■ A future for news

RODNEY PINDER
■ Living to tell the story

MORT ROSENBLUM
■ Don’t like WikiLeaks? Let reporters do their jobs

CHRIS AHEARN
■ Link economy and journalism

The Reuter Society is a social club for anyone who has ever worked for Reuters, or Thomson Reuters, and wants to keep in touch with former colleagues. It promotes comradeship and informal contact among professionals from the business of news and financial services, communications and information technology. It brings together people with different skills and interests. Members may have worked for any branch of the group, in the UK or overseas, in editorial, finance, legal, HR, marketing, sales, technical and so on. Partners are most welcome to join in the Society’s activities.

The Society holds four regular members’ meetings a year, usually at St Bride’s Institute off Fleet Street, London. Someone with a Thomson Reuters connection is invited to talk about current company developments or about their own experience of “Life after Reuters”. Past speakers have ranged from former group chief executive Tom Glocer to thriller writer Frederick Forsyth. After the talk there is a reception when members socialise. Meetings last about three hours, starting either at noon or 5:00 pm. Every two years the Society organises a group excursion. Past destinations have included Lille, Edinburgh and Geneva.

THE REUTER SOCIETY FUND

The Reuter Society Fund, launched in December 2012, is a benevolent fund to help members who have fallen on hard times.

It makes occasional financial grants to members who are in need or difficulty, primarily to pay for exceptional medical care or other forms of short-term or emergency help.

The Fund uses surplus cash from the Society’s own resources and donations, including legacies, from other sources. Grants are single once-only payments for specific purposes. They are intended to be a resource of last resort for members in the absence of other public or private sources of support.

Donations to the Fund can be made by contacting the chairman, ■ Stephen Somerville, in the first instance.

JOIN NOW

Membership of The Reuter Society costs just £10 a year – or £120 for a lifetime subscription. CLICK the following link and print the application form.

■ Membership application form

DIARY DATES

THURSDAY 10 OCTOBER 2013
12:00 PM TO 3:00 PM.

TUESDAY 3 DECEMBER 2013
5:00 PM TO 8:00 PM.

Reuter Society groups on

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■ More about The Reuter Society

Roland Dallas, 77, a former Reuters correspondent and features desk editor in London, died on 8 June 2013 after a long illness.

■ more…

Reuters staff who have died whilst covering war and conflict are commemorated in a Memorial Book, copies of which are displayed in London, New York and other major offices. A copy is also on show at the Newseum, Washington, DC. Each entry has been researched and written by Peter Mosley (Reuters 1957-1992), former features editor. The contents of the book are reproduced here by permission of David Schlesinger, formerly editor-in-chief.

Every media worker killed since 1944 while doing their job is commemorated at the Journalists Memorial at Bayeux, Normandy. Inaugurated on 7 October 2006, it bears nearly 2,000 names. The memorial is the initiative of Reporters Sans Frontières/Reporters Without Borders.

Another memorial to news staff killed on location is situated in London. It is in the form of a 10 metre glass and steel cone mounted on the roof of BBC Broadcasting House. At 10 pm each night the cone projects a beam of light up to one kilometre into the sky. It was inaugurated by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on 16 June 2008.

The Newseum in Washington, DC, is home of the Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial which bears the names of more than 1,800 individuals etched on curved glass panels.

■ Memorial Book foreword

■ Frank Roberts
Suakim, Sudan 15 May 1885

■ Ernest Sheepshanks
Teruel, Spain 31 December 1937

■ Alexander Anderson
at sea, off Alexandria, Egypt December 1941

■ Kenneth Selby-Walker
off Sumatra March 1942

■ Kenneth Stonehouse
Bay of Biscay 2 June 1943

■ Stewart Sale
Scafati near Naples, Italy 28 September 1943

■ William Stringer
near Chartres, France 17 August 1944

■ Derek Pearcy
Korea 26 May 1951

■ Bruce Pigott, Ron Laramy
Saigon 5 May 1968

■ Najmul Hasan
Western Iran 11 August 1983

■ Wilfredo Vicoy
Northern Philippines 25 April 1986

■ Roberto Navas Alvarez
San Salvador 18 March 1989

■ John Mathai
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 4 June 1991

■ Anthony Macharia, Hos Maina, Dan Eldon
Somalia 12 July 1993

■ Adil Bunyatov
Baku 17 March 1995

■ Mohamed Amin
off Comoro Islands, Indian Ocean 23 November 1996

■ Kurt Schork
Sierra Leone 24 May 2000

■ Harry Burton, Azizullah Haidari
Afghanistan 19 November 2001

■ Taras Protsyuk
Baghdad 8 April 2003

■ Mazen Dana
Baghdad 17 August 2003

■ Adlan Khasanov
Grozny 9 May 2004

■ Dhia Najim
Ramadi 1 November 2004

■ Waleed Khaled
Baghdad 28 August 2005

■ Namir Noor-Eldeen, Saeed Chmagh
Baghdad 12 July 2007

■ Fadel Shana
Gaza 16 April 2008

■ Hiro Muramoto
Bangkok 10 April 2010

■ Sabah al-Bazee
Tikrit, Iraq 29 March 2011

Wherever two or more Reuters people gather together they are sure to have a preferred neighbourhood watering hole. It may have been the redoubtable Mrs Moon’s, a grubby, nondescript bar in a draughty Fleet Street cellar whose strange mystique lay in its grim and charmless scruffiness and famously iron rule of its fierce, eponymous landlady; or Mulligan’s on a busy mid-town Manhattan corner of Seventh Avenue in New York where weekly paychecks were cashed by the jovial Irish bartenders more promptly and with far more grace than at any bank; or the legendary colonial-style FCC – the Foreign Correspondents’ Club – on Lower Albert Road in Central, Hong Kong, a second home for journalists in Asia to this day.

Many are the unsung haunts in quieter, far-flung spots where correspondents swapped tales about the privations of assignments in hardship posts: the heat, the flies, the warm champagne.

Brian Williams, former correspondent, editor and much-travelled bon vivant, is one of many who have known a few refuges from the rigours of the job. “One of the joys of working for Reuters was going to foreign lands and knowing that if you called the bureau they'd (in most cases) know the best little secret restaurant or beach or hang-out or bar or some such,” he recalls.

So, in response to a plea from the Digger for recommendations, here is a space where you can send details of your own haven of choice, past or present. Some of them may no longer serve though it’s likely that they live on in folk memory as the ghostly haunts of the tired and emotional in times past. Others may be new discoveries worth commending to colleagues.

BEIRUT
The most striking element in the illusion of Austrian Alps refuge from the civil war reality of tension on the streets of Beirut was the bleak personality of the owner of Myrtom House, a tall, thin man with cropped blond hair who was rumoured to have served as a model for an iconic Hitler Youth bust. He presided over the big timber bar with an air of gloom and foreboding and if you ever wanted a pessimistic viewpoint on the latest Middle East crisis, would provide a ready-made doomsday quote.
■ Recollections by Steve Somerville

HONG KONG
Even Reuters has written about it and despite a dwindling population of journalists in the former colony there is still a waiting list to join the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong, which once had a hotline from the Reuters office to the Main Bar, legends like the Naked Copper, and a loo with a view immortalised by John le Carré. All this, and more, has made the FCC world famous (in Hong Kong).
■ Recollections by Jonathan Sharp

JOHANNESBURG
The foreign press corps’ favourite watering hole in apartheid-era Johannesburg was a bar that began as a gold rush miners’ shack, became a more upmarket bar and restaurant and then, as businesses fled the urban violence of downtown Jo’burg for the relative safety of the city’s northern suburbs, reverted to little more than a shebeen. During the glory years, segregation (professional segregation, that is) extended to the econ/gennews staff.
■ Recollections by Peter Gregson

KABUL
It tasted like turpentine but local wine – yes, Afghan wine – was on offer for a succession of correspondents visiting Kabul in the days before the Taliban. The Intercontinental hotel, a watchpost on a hill and a comfortable refuge from the dust of the city, was a haven, a nest of spies and a hang-out for propagandists.
■ Recollections by Barry May

LONDON
As dive bars go Mrs Moon’s could scarcely go lower. Among its denizens a latter-day Hogarth might have found inspiration for a finely observed cartoon capturing the slightly seedy atmosphere and occasional air of subterranean mischief. When the doors closed for the last time after an epic day and night of strictly illicit drinking in the winter of 1984 (British pub opening hours in those days were more rigidly regulated), a little bit of Fleet Street, shabby, mystical and as beloved as a favourite pair of comfortable old shoes, disappeared.
■ Recollections by George Short

LONDON: 85
Bankers and lawyers now occupy the upper floors of the building that was Reuters’ headquarters for six decades. But at street level the memory of Paul Julius Reuter is evoked in pictures and there is even a Reuters room in the basement at Lutyens Restaurant, Bar and Cellar Rooms. It’s all a far cry from the St Paul’s Grill, Reuters’ staff canteen on the 8th floor in the 1970s and later. If any ghosts from its long gone Reuters days still haunt 85 they are keeping quiet.
■ Recollections by Barry May

NEW YORK
They starred on Broadway and slummed on Seventh as a growing colony of expat journalists expanded Reuters’ American domain. Proximity to the newsroom high in a skyscraper with views of the Manhattan roofscape, across the Hudson to New Jersey and beyond was key to the location of any refuge from the desk: journalists needed more than their lunchtime to carry out editorial planning sessions. Rousing scenes of alcohol-stoked global news stars vying to command the marathon editorial meetings are still evoked.
■ Recollections by Michael Reilly

NICOSIA
It was almost impossible to get a small drink at Solomon's, the hole-in-the-wall bar run by a handsome, moustachioed retired detective in Nicosia: the beer was in large bottles, whisky was miniatures, a tumbler of ouzo and water made you cough and if you asked for a glass of wine the bottle was left at your elbow, with the clear implication that a real man would empty it. The bar attracted a paramilitary following, friends from Solomon's former career, as well as journalists.
■ Recollections by Mike Hughes

PARIS
Nowhere but Paris could be home to a cheap and cheerful bistro that featured a statuesque blonde waitress called Nelly, a bar nicknamed Smelly's after its malodorous patron, and everywhere plenty of vin rouge. Memories are vague, possibly clouded by alcoholic haze.
■ Recollections by Tony Winning

SAIGON
The bars of Saigon were home for two generations of war correspondents, the reporters who covered the French and American conflicts. They offered an essential interlude between forays out of the city to the battlefields of Vietnam. Some of them were hotel bars, others back street dives. The older ones, like the Continental and the Majestic, figured in novels of the French Indochina War, by writers such as Graham Greene and Jean Lartéguy. Later the Caravelle became the American media headquarters. One of the attractions of the most popular bars was their rooftop location: at times of crisis in the city they became vantage points for viewing the action. Now they are luxury leisure scenes for rich tourists.
■ Recollections by Steve Somerville

WASHINGTON
Although it had a celebrated history the old National Press Club bar was no place to look at but it was handy for Reuters’ Washington bureau a few floors below in the same landmark building. And anyhow, the main attraction was the good talk, big drinks, occasional argument and friendly fisticuffs. It wasn’t the only show in town, though. The Class Reunion, the Old Ebbitt, the Dubliner, the Tune In and others competed for the attention of the US capital’s pen and pad crowd.
■ Recollections by Michael Posner

■ Paul Julius Reuter

■ Significant dates in the history of Reuters

■ Reuters Fact Sheet

■ Farewell to Fleet Street

A GLIMPSE OF THE ARCHIVES

■ James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming learnt his writing skill as a Reuters correspondent and later became a foreign manager at a newspaper group acquired by Thomson.

■ A report on the assassination of President Lincoln was thrown into the sea and then retrieved in outsize shrimping nets to give Reuters an early market-moving scoop in Europe.

■ A Reuters dispatch concealed in a train driver’s sandwich in Africa drove London “stark, raving mad” and gave birth to a new verb, “to maffick”, in dictionaries.

■ Six fast donkeys were part of an elaborate communications system assembled by Reuters to get out the story of a 3,000-year-old king – a scoop gained by a shrewd bluff.

■ Reuters was first with news of the closure of the border between East and West Berlin after a mysterious tip-off and first again when the wall dividing the city came down 28 years later.

These and many other stories in Reuters’ distinguished history are to be found in documents held within the company archives, a rich repository of fact and anecdote.

They were explored for A Glimpse of the Archives, a series of 10 monographs on four famous authors who had worked for Reuters and six world-shaking events that were significant news file landmarks over the course of a century.

Basil Chapman* (Reuters 1953-1983), former assistant world services editor, returned from retirement to research and write them. Each one was illustrated by a specially commissioned caricature drawn by British cartoonist David Smith. They were first published in Reuters World, the staff magazine, in 1988. Enlargements were printed on art paper, framed and hung in Reuters’ offices around the world. The caricatures are the copyright of David Smith and are reproduced here with his permission.

*Basil Chapman died on 20 August 2008 aged 90.

■ Ian Fleming

■ John Buchan

■ Frederick Forsyth

■ Edgar Wallace

■ Mafeking relieved

■ Lincoln assassinated

■ Tutankhamen discovered

■ Everest conquered

■ Gandhi shot

■ Berlin Border closed

MORE FROM THE ARCHIVES

■ New name, same old failure

■ A tale of two cities

■ How they brought the good news

■ Enter Heinrich Geller - stage right

■ Dr Davies, I presume

■ Romantic, idealist and no chip off the old block

■ Location, location, location

■ The new Siamese twins

■ Reuters' first editor - scoundrel, womaniser and journalist of flair

■ Dancing to a different tune

■ Ultra-British editor who loved America took royal bribes

■ William Haley and the Trust Principles

■ A pioneer for women who broke through barriers

■ Reuters trainees past and present

■ How to become a Reuters trainee

■ The Baron's management philosophy

The library is arranged in six sections:

■ Books about Reuters

■ Books by Reuters

■ Books of interest

■ Books by Reuters authors
UNDER CONSTRUCTION

■ Book reviews

■ Film: A Dispatch from Reuters

■ Please advise the editor of new books.