Marcus Ferrar
Allan Maitland
Monday 19 December 2011
I remember Allan Maitland when I came out to Portugal to cover the Revolution in 1974. He had been there for two years and promised to introduce me to all the contacts I would need. We sat for a whole lunch waiting for the Government Information Minister to turn up, and on our way back saw The Minister’s name on the wall of the Ministry with the slogan “saneado” – purged. He was on his way to Brazil. Exciting times, and Allan took it all with the deceptively relaxed and debonair ease of a Graham Greene character. During Portugal’s colonial war, he found himself in the depths of Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau), a white man’s grave if ever, visiting a Portuguese military base in a place called Xitole. Which, as it promptly occurred to him, is pronounced in Portuguese just like the English word shithole. It was to his everlasting regret that the guerrillas failed to lob a few shells into the camp during his stay, depriving him of the pretext to file a dispatch from such an august dateline. Allan was a kind character, the unruffled epitome of the foreign correspondent of yesteryear. He will be missed.
Marcus Ferrar
nbnbn
Marcus Ferrar
nbnbn
Dennis Savage
Friday 30 September 2011
Sorry to hear Dennis Savage is no more [● Obituary: Dennis Savage]. Commodity Desk evening editor. Doesn’t sound much, but he was a good memory for me. That’s where I was first sent to learn to be a journalist, and Dennis took the trouble to help a junior trainee. I appreciated it.
Marcus Ferrar
nbnbn
Marcus Ferrar
nbnbn
Erdmute Greis-Behrendt
Thursday 18 August 2011
This is sad news. Erdmute was an inspiration, since she had a knack of seeing the bright side of adversity. As a wartime child she “rather liked” hiding from devastating air raids in Berlin bomb shelters, because the grown-ups did their best to spoil the children. Evacuation to the countryside fascinated her, as she remembers it full of brown men wearing turbans – Indian prisoners of war. When Berlin women had to clear mountains of rubble in 1945, she happily joined in since it was better than hanging around bored.
With that sort of aplomb, she was an example to any young Reuters correspondent daunted by the menacing atmosphere of East Berlin (in 1971/72 I felt as if World War II had finished only three weeks ago).
As others have been able to verify, she did not report on Reuters correspondents to the Stasi secret police. However the Stasi spied intensively on her. In her files, she later found piles of reports by Stasi collaborators tracking her as she went to and from her country cottage. As she drove through villages, always on the same route, they would telephone on to the next village to warn that “she’s coming” and record the fact for posterity. They also knew exactly how she gave birth to her son, since the obstetrician turned out to be a serving Stasi officer.
When I met Erdmute three years ago, after a gap of 36 years, she told me these stories in her Pankow flat – as the good journalist she had become. When I asked what impact Reuters had in East Berlin as the only Western news organisation, she replied: “Class. Reuters added tone to East Berlin.” She did that too.
Marcus Ferrar
vbnbnbn
With that sort of aplomb, she was an example to any young Reuters correspondent daunted by the menacing atmosphere of East Berlin (in 1971/72 I felt as if World War II had finished only three weeks ago).
As others have been able to verify, she did not report on Reuters correspondents to the Stasi secret police. However the Stasi spied intensively on her. In her files, she later found piles of reports by Stasi collaborators tracking her as she went to and from her country cottage. As she drove through villages, always on the same route, they would telephone on to the next village to warn that “she’s coming” and record the fact for posterity. They also knew exactly how she gave birth to her son, since the obstetrician turned out to be a serving Stasi officer.
When I met Erdmute three years ago, after a gap of 36 years, she told me these stories in her Pankow flat – as the good journalist she had become. When I asked what impact Reuters had in East Berlin as the only Western news organisation, she replied: “Class. Reuters added tone to East Berlin.” She did that too.
Marcus Ferrar
vbnbnbn
Ronald Farquhar
Wednesday 20 April 2011
The death of Ronnie Farquhar is very sad news. For many years he epitomised the lone Reuters correspondent behind the Iron Curtain. He was an example to all of us who followed in his steps. I think back to the months in 1971 when we collaborated intensively in East Berlin on the German détente treaties. I can still see him working late into the night, night after night, in the grimy old East Berlin office. He lived in a tower block hotel in a room so high he was practically never out of the winter clouds.
Marcus Ferrar
Marcus Ferrar
The Knowledge Effect
Thursday 27 January 2011
Knowledge Effect – nice idea, but oh dear. The texts of the samples are prosaic and full of cumbersome phrases. The deadpan narrators sound as if they are reading them for the first time. It comes across as such a boring business. Can't believe it really is.
Marcus Ferrar
Marcus Ferrar
Accuracy and speed
Sunday 22 November 2009
I don't go for the debate on speed v. accuracy. A senior Thomson Reuters editor says news today is "contingent, uncertain and provisional." I see his point. In today's unlimited mass of news and opinion, you are irrelevant if you are not constantly present. But you can't get around the fact that news that is not true is trash, and peddling it is a trashy activity.
But speed does matter. Reuters had a proud tradition of being first with the news, and Thomson Reuters still scores beats. No correspondent in the field survived for long if he/she was regularly behind. I still cringe to think I was 10 minutes behind with a crash at Prague airport in 1973. I also remember my frustration at seeing wrapups for which I had shed tears and sweat, if not quite blood, trickle slowly out of the World Desk some four hours later, scarcely changed.
You have to be both right AND quick. Phew! For a moment I though I was getting old and something had changed. It hasn't.
Marcus Ferrar
But speed does matter. Reuters had a proud tradition of being first with the news, and Thomson Reuters still scores beats. No correspondent in the field survived for long if he/she was regularly behind. I still cringe to think I was 10 minutes behind with a crash at Prague airport in 1973. I also remember my frustration at seeing wrapups for which I had shed tears and sweat, if not quite blood, trickle slowly out of the World Desk some four hours later, scarcely changed.
You have to be both right AND quick. Phew! For a moment I though I was getting old and something had changed. It hasn't.
Marcus Ferrar
Arthur Spiegelman
Monday 22 December 2008
I never met him, he never mentored me. I just read his stuff on the file and thought: that’s what I should aspire to. I still do. People like Art are the heart of Reuters and have made that name so special.
Marcus Ferrar
Marcus Ferrar
