Obituary
Obituary: Allan Dowd
Tuesday 17 January 2012
Allan went to his doctor with what he thought was a mysterious, hard-to-shake cold in July, just weeks after reporting on the rioting that erupted when Vancouver lost in the finals of the Stanley Cup. It turned out to be a particularly aggressive form of lymphoma, and he died on 10 January. His mother, and his sister Laura were with him. Special thanks from the Reuters family to all the Vancouver journalists who stepped in to help when Allan fell sick, but especially to his Reuters colleague Nicole Mordant.
Janet Guttsman
Obituary: Allan Maitland
Sunday 11 December 2011
After Cambridge University and military service in Cyprus and Egypt, Maitland joined Reuters as a trainee journalist in 1962. His first posting was to Brazil.
He was assigned to Saigon in 1969 to join the reporting team covering the Vietnam War. There he quickly found himself covering a Viet Cong attack on a South Vietnamese military base. Two years ago Maitland recounted his experiences for a multi-media project for the Imperial War Museum in London. Asked how he coped, he replied: “The adrenalin was up and one got on with it.”
After Vietnam Maitland reported the conflict in Cambodia and then the Portuguese revolution.
He retired in 1990, leaving as associate editor of the staff magazine Reuters World.
● Allan Maitland in Vietnam: ‘The adrenalin was up…’
Obituary: Mark Nichols
Tuesday 11 October 2011
Mark Nichols, a sub-editor on Reuters’ Nordesk in London in the 1960s, died in hospital in Toronto at age 74 on 21 September.
Nichols worked for Reuters from 1964 to 1968, translating the file into North American-friendly usage, after spending four years with The Canadian Press wire service in Toronto.
“He was a big influence on my life, especially at Nordesk in the 1960s, where I saw him as the personification of the journalist that I – with six months of experience at CP under my belt – wanted to be,” journalist Robert Marshall said.
During his time as a writer for Time Canada from 1969 to 1977, Nichols was inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame in 1971. He became editor of the Imperial Oil Review from 1978 to 1980 and then served as a section editor at Maclean’s, Canada's weekly news magazine, from 1983 to 2000, overseeing Canada news and, later, technology and science.
“There really wasn't an assignment that Mark could not handle or a subject that he could not distill into a silken narrative,” Robert Lewis, former editor-in-chief at Maclean’s, wrote in a eulogy. “He wrote about politics, business and the arts with aplomb.”
Nichols worked for Reuters from 1964 to 1968, translating the file into North American-friendly usage, after spending four years with The Canadian Press wire service in Toronto.
“He was a big influence on my life, especially at Nordesk in the 1960s, where I saw him as the personification of the journalist that I – with six months of experience at CP under my belt – wanted to be,” journalist Robert Marshall said.
During his time as a writer for Time Canada from 1969 to 1977, Nichols was inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame in 1971. He became editor of the Imperial Oil Review from 1978 to 1980 and then served as a section editor at Maclean’s, Canada's weekly news magazine, from 1983 to 2000, overseeing Canada news and, later, technology and science.
“There really wasn't an assignment that Mark could not handle or a subject that he could not distill into a silken narrative,” Robert Lewis, former editor-in-chief at Maclean’s, wrote in a eulogy. “He wrote about politics, business and the arts with aplomb.”
Obituary: Frank Fitter
Friday 30 September 2011
Frank Fitter, a stalwart of the economic services editorial department in London before turning to human resources and welfare duties, has died at the age of 79.
Fitter joined the commercial department as an office junior in 1948 and following his return to the company in 1952 after two years' national service with the Royal Air Force became a sub-editor, then copytaster. He was appointed evening editor in 1969, office manager in 1977, staff executive in 1979 and welfare officer in 1981.
He retired on 9 July 1987, his 55th birthday, after 38 years with Reuters. Fitter died on 14 September.
Fitter joined the commercial department as an office junior in 1948 and following his return to the company in 1952 after two years' national service with the Royal Air Force became a sub-editor, then copytaster. He was appointed evening editor in 1969, office manager in 1977, staff executive in 1979 and welfare officer in 1981.
He retired on 9 July 1987, his 55th birthday, after 38 years with Reuters. Fitter died on 14 September.
Obituary: Dennis Savage
Thursday 29 September 2011
Dennis Savage, a long-serving commodities journalist in Comtelburo and Reuters Economic Services, died on Sunday in the Journalists’ Charity home in Dorking, Surrey, where he had been resident since March. He was in his mid-80s.
Savage joined Reuters in 1950 and transferred to the company’s permanent disability scheme in 1978. He had worked in the City office in London editing the non-ferrous metals and sugar bulletins before combining the jobs of evening editor and filing editor.
The funeral will be at 2:30 pm on Tuesday 4 October at North-East Surrey Crematorium, Lower Morden Lane, Morden, Surrey.
Savage joined Reuters in 1950 and transferred to the company’s permanent disability scheme in 1978. He had worked in the City office in London editing the non-ferrous metals and sugar bulletins before combining the jobs of evening editor and filing editor.
The funeral will be at 2:30 pm on Tuesday 4 October at North-East Surrey Crematorium, Lower Morden Lane, Morden, Surrey.
Obituary: Robert Eksuzyan
Saturday 24 September 2011
But for several generations of correspondents, this irascible, short-fused but utterly endearing ethnic Armenian was much more than just a fixer: his honesty and integrity – despite the ideological pressures he worked under until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 – made him a loyal and reliable friend. He had a clear devotion to Reuters, and a deep respect for the correspondents who worked for it and their families. He was a hilarious raconteur – and he loved to provoke an argument too. Rows were always conducted with gusto, made all the more entertaining by his erratic English, a language he adored but which, to his great frustration, he had never mastered. This was a source of much amusement, though, to his colleagues. As John Morrison, a former Moscow bureau chief in the 1980s, said: “I would love to have had a chance to explain to him the sense of ‘You had a good innings’.” Most of us ascribed his hot-headedness to his Armenian blood and his upbringing in Abkhazia, the now breakaway region of Georgia. And how he loved to provoke us all – even when he was nearing the end of his long service! I recall him arriving for work one morning when he was well into his 70s, and announcing to the editorial floor with a raised, clenched fist: “One day, Abkhazia will bring the United States to its knees!”
Bob Evans, his bureau chief for much of the Brezhnev period, says he was hired in 1964 by then bureau chief Sidney Weiland not so much for his English, which was clearly dodgy, but for his potential as a fixer. It was an inspired decision. Seated in the old Reuters office in a lugubrious Soviet building known by its acronym of Sad Sam (Sadovo-Samtyochnaya), he would argue for hours on the phone with Soviet bureaucrats to get access to sporting events and even political information. Trawling through the columns of the intimidating Soviet broadsheets of the day, he would pounce on scraps of buried information – or more often notice what was not said – and draw conclusions that would put correspondents on the trail of a news story. His leads often led to page one stories round the world.
Robert was intensely proud of his father, an Abkhaz-Armenian Red Army officer who survived Stalin’s pre-war military purges and went on to beat a war-time death sentence and service in a ‘punishment battalion’ from which he was not expected to come back alive. It was memories of his father, rehabilitated in the 1950s, that made Robert a patriot – and though he loved the company of Western correspondents and deeply respected Western values he was no push-over for empty anti-Soviet propaganda. Having worked all his life for British bureau chiefs, though, he had an extraordinary admiration for the British. After the defeat or Argentina in the 1982 Falklands war, he observed: “I have been telling people for ages round here that Britain would win. Nobody believed me.” A high point of his life was a trip to England, his first ever outside the Soviet Union, to spend a week in Editorial when Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika had made travel possible for ordinary Soviet citizens. To his astonishment he found “there was food in the shops even outside London as well!” Bob Evans had taken him on a Saturday stroll down the high street in Sutton, Surrey.
A universal character and himself a boy at heart, he loved the company of young people whom he always encouraged. With women, he was chivalry itself. He once chewed out a Western colleague for divulging the age of a female colleague whose birthday we were celebrating, and told off more than one bureau chief when he thought they were not paying enough attention to their wives.
The extraordinary tributes from his colleagues, drawing on vivid memories, speak of a remarkable life lived to the full.
Having spent most of his life combing through the Soviet or Russian press, clipping out articles for potential news stories and filing them, he never made the adjustment to the full-blooded computer age when it dawned at Reuters. He retreated more into himself in the office and took out a lot of his frustration on the hi-tech of the day which stubbornly remained beyond his reach. But he soldiered on through three office moves – and at least one stroke – ending his working days in the present premises of Berlin House, giving us always the warmth of his company and benefit of his historical recall which was so useful.
“He considered Reuters his home,” his grandson, also called Robert, said.
He retired in 2008, after a 40-year-career in Reuters interrupted only by a period in the mid-1970s when he was ordered by the KGB to move to another news organisation because he had become – as they told him – “too friendly” with our “bourgeois correspondents”. He was allowed to return three years later after our well-connected office driver Zhora Nikitin who, like all our Soviet staff, loved him too, intervened with the authorities. For a while, after retirement, he stayed on in Moscow with his wife Anya, but then they moved back to Gagra for his last years in the family house he inherited when his mother died. He continued to care for its surrounding mandarine orchard which he had looked after throughout his adult life.
Richard Balmforth
Obituary: Ronald Harris
Friday 26 August 2011
An obituary in The Guardian written by his granddaughter, Sally Panter, said he was known for his grit, determination, intellect and good humour, all of which he used to improve the everyday lives of many.
Born in Manchester, Harris’s first real act of self-will came at the age of 12 when he defied his father, an ardent Manchester City fan, and began to support United, to which he became devoted. “My great-grandfather stopped his pocket money for good, but in typical style, Ron got a newspaper round to pay for the admission and walked each Saturday to Old Trafford,” she wrote.
His early career was interrupted by World War II, during which he served in the navy as a telegrapher. Called up on Christmas Day 1942, he was assigned to HMS Offa, part of a destroyer flotilla on Arctic convoys escorting merchant shipping to Murmansk and Archangel.
“Ron was profoundly affected by his experiences of D-Day in 1944 and his time on the wartime Arctic convoys, and went on to become the chairman of the Russian Convoy Club in London,” his granddaughter said. After the war he told of the severe weather conditions, dangers from ice packs and German U-boats, and the poor prospects of survival if anyone went overboard. He returned to Normandy in 2009 for the 65th anniversary commemorations of the landings.
After the war Harris used his telegraphy skills at the Post Office in Manchester, where he became a trade union activist, going on to serve as a senior official at the National Graphical Association. “His move to Reuters in 1976 did not win him many friends in the unions, but at Reuters he was fair and caring with a passion for improving working conditions.”
● SOURCE The Guardian
Obituary: Erdmute Greis-Behrendt
Tuesday 16 August 2011
Erdmute, pictured in the East Berlin bureau in the late 1970s, was 74 and died after a long, courageous battle against cancer, Annette von Broecker writes. She is survived by her son Max and husband Thomas.
Erdmute, an East German graduate, joined Reuters in November 1959 and helped Peter Johnson set up Reuters’ and the western world’s first media bureau in East Berlin as an editorial assistant, her journalistic ambitions cruelly controlled and curtailed by East Germany’s foreign ministry. Erdmute kept the bureau going throughout the upheavals of Berlin’s recent history, from the building of the wall, alongside Adam Kellett-Long 50 years ago, to its collapse 28 years later. She then became a member of Reuters’ first united Berlin reporting bureau, retiring in 1997.
Among the many Reuter correspondents who gained their first journalistic experience out in the cold war were, among others, the late Brian Horton, Jack Altman, Frederick Forsythe, Tony Grey, Colin McIntyre, Derek Parr, Mark Wood, Mark Brayne and, at the time of German reunification, Martin Nesirky and Paul Taylor.
I am sure that everyone who had met Erdmute was impressed by her kindness, her devotion to her work and her reliability. I will remember her humour and her wonderful, crystal-clear laughter, her red hair and gentle smile. I saw Erdmute last June. We knew each other for 52 years, because I joined Reuters two weeks before her but on the other side of the iron fence – in West Berlin. We were friends. I am very sad.
Erdmute will be buried in her husband's family grave in Thuringia on 2 September.
Obituary: Clare McDermott
Tuesday 05 July 2011
Clare McDermott, correspondent and editor during a 36-year career with Reuters, died overnight. He was 82.
McDermott grew up in Edmonton, Canada, playing basketball, watching ice hockey and dreaming that one day he would be a sports writer.
“That boyhood dream survived an apprenticeship on the night shift of the Ottawa Journal and it came true for me at Reuters,” he recalled long after retirement in 1990. “It turned to ashes when, as the sports editor, I reported the 1980 ‘joyless Olympiad’ in Moscow, where America led a boycott by 40 countries in protest against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In the half century since I became a journalist, politics gnawed at the Olympic ideal like a hungry rat and, when the politicians stayed away from world sport, it was the turn of money and drugs.”
Born in 1928, McDermott graduated from Carleton University and joined Reuters in 1954 on summer holiday relief during a hitchhiking tour of Europe. He served in London and Paris before being assigned to Beijing in 1960, later reporting from Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia, Cyprus and Guyana and the United States before becoming editor in Asia, based in Singapore, in 1969. He was sports editor from 1973 until 1980, when he became editor, general news. After retirement as a corporate marketing communications executive in 1990 he taught journalism.
“I wasn’t hired as a sports reporter, but I grabbed many chances to write about sport and early on in my time as a foreign correspondent: and – no – looking back, I know that there really was no excuse for being so sadly surprised at the way that politics intruded on those 1980 Olympics that I’d eventually cover as an editor under a sunny blue sky in Cold War Moscow,” McDermott recalled in Reuters’ 2001 book ● Frontlines: Snapshots of history.
“In the early 1960s I was based in Beijing, when we had a foretaste of what would later be called ‘ping-pong diplomacy’. Mao's China built a magnificent new arena to stage the twenty-sixth World Table Tennis Championships. Britain and Australia competed, but the United States and many others boycotted the event.
“It was a bizarre moment. I was out there writing about ping-pong, yet at the same time – forbidden to travel beyond Beijing and facing a wall of silence from Chinese communist officialdom – frantically trying to piece together scraps of information about the horrors of drought, famine and the chaos of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, when perhaps as many as 20 million people perished.”
McDermott lived in Shropshire, England. Cremation will be on Friday 15 July.
McDermott grew up in Edmonton, Canada, playing basketball, watching ice hockey and dreaming that one day he would be a sports writer.
“That boyhood dream survived an apprenticeship on the night shift of the Ottawa Journal and it came true for me at Reuters,” he recalled long after retirement in 1990. “It turned to ashes when, as the sports editor, I reported the 1980 ‘joyless Olympiad’ in Moscow, where America led a boycott by 40 countries in protest against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In the half century since I became a journalist, politics gnawed at the Olympic ideal like a hungry rat and, when the politicians stayed away from world sport, it was the turn of money and drugs.”
Born in 1928, McDermott graduated from Carleton University and joined Reuters in 1954 on summer holiday relief during a hitchhiking tour of Europe. He served in London and Paris before being assigned to Beijing in 1960, later reporting from Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia, Cyprus and Guyana and the United States before becoming editor in Asia, based in Singapore, in 1969. He was sports editor from 1973 until 1980, when he became editor, general news. After retirement as a corporate marketing communications executive in 1990 he taught journalism.
“I wasn’t hired as a sports reporter, but I grabbed many chances to write about sport and early on in my time as a foreign correspondent: and – no – looking back, I know that there really was no excuse for being so sadly surprised at the way that politics intruded on those 1980 Olympics that I’d eventually cover as an editor under a sunny blue sky in Cold War Moscow,” McDermott recalled in Reuters’ 2001 book ● Frontlines: Snapshots of history.
“In the early 1960s I was based in Beijing, when we had a foretaste of what would later be called ‘ping-pong diplomacy’. Mao's China built a magnificent new arena to stage the twenty-sixth World Table Tennis Championships. Britain and Australia competed, but the United States and many others boycotted the event.
“It was a bizarre moment. I was out there writing about ping-pong, yet at the same time – forbidden to travel beyond Beijing and facing a wall of silence from Chinese communist officialdom – frantically trying to piece together scraps of information about the horrors of drought, famine and the chaos of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, when perhaps as many as 20 million people perished.”
McDermott lived in Shropshire, England. Cremation will be on Friday 15 July.
Obituary: Gilbert Sedbon
Sunday 26 June 2011
Gil, as his numerous friends knew him, had served Reuters for nearly half a century. It was an extraordinary career by one of the most endearing people to have worked for Reuters, an organisation to which he was entirely devoted.
Gil was born in Alexandria, Egypt, then under British rule, to a family of Tunisian Jewish origin and was therefore a French national, something of which he was intensely proud.
He joined Reuters in Alexandria at the age of 18 and according to Stephen Somerville, in his ● review of Gil’s memoirs “From the Nile to the Seine: The lifelong story of a reporter in wars, revolutions and peacetime” published last year, his first job was reporting cotton prices, the main source of Egypt’s wealth, for Reuters’ economic services.
World War Two gave him his chance to excel at reporting major international stories. One of the first was a wartime victory for secret diplomacy: a “gentlemen’s agreement” between British and French admirals to disarm Force X, the French naval contingent based at Alexandria, without bloodshed. An ingenious compromise, reached after tense negotiations, prevented the French warships from falling under German or Vichy French control. Gilbert pieced the story together from contacts he had made at the French Club Nautique in Alexandria. It made headlines around the world, long before the British government published the agreement.
A sadder story that Gilbert recalled reporting was the wartime death of his first boss, ● Alexander “Jock” Massey-Anderson, manager in Alexandria, who was covering the Eastern Mediterranean as a naval correspondent. He drowned after his ship was torpedoed just outside Alexandria harbour. Gilbert’s report, based on interviews with survivors, ran prominently in the British and Allied press.
“And so on, throughout the war and the troubled peace that followed, Gilbert pursues every story with the same enthusiasm and determination, as well as, by his own admission, an element of luck,” Somerville wrote. “His advice to newcomers to journalism is: ‘Chance often smiles on the reporter in the field – if he grabs it fast.’ His own natural curiosity and his ability to establish contacts at all levels were other key elements in his successive scoops. It was an anonymous contact who tipped him off by telephone to the Egyptian army’s coup d’état in 1952. International communications were immediately cut off but Gilbert managed to intercept the senior army officer who was about to broadcast news of the military takeover. The officer not only helped Gilbert to write an official English version of the Arabic announcement but then ordered the military censor to release his story, alone among the world news agencies. Gilbert had a global scoop plus a first rate contact: the officer was Colonel Anwar Sadat, later to become President of Egypt.
“The news story that changed Gilbert’s life for ever was the Anglo-French Suez Canal expedition of 1956, when most foreigners were ordered out of Egypt. Together with his 20-year-old wife, Yolande, and their baby son, Eric, Gilbert was given 48 hours to wind up the affairs of a lifetime and fly off into exile. After brief stays in Rome and London, Reuters posted him to Paris for three months. It proved to be his base for the rest of his long career. But that’s another story. Book Two of these memoirs tells how Gilbert turns his reporting talents to the Cold War, defence and the aerospace business, while his young family – with the addition of a second son, Thierry – settle down, overcome some tough times and make France their new home. Paying tribute to his wife, he says: ‘Yo deserves all the praise and more.’ From the Nile to the Seine, the whole book is an impressive testimony to a man’s passion for his profession and devotion to his family.”
After retiring from Reuters in 1983 as diplomatic correspondent in France, Gil continued to work as a stringer for British and Australian aerospace magazines, drawing on his multiple contacts in the aerospace industry.
The funeral is on Thursday 30 June at the Cimetière Parisien de Pantin, 164 avenue Jean Jaures, in Pantin, adjacent to Paris.
Bernard Edinger
Obituary: Shaun Best
Monday 13 June 2011
Best had just finished dinner with other photographers covering the Canadian Grand Prix and was driving home with his longtime partner, Montreal Gazette copy editor Denise Duguay, when he had the attack.
“He came out of Winnipeg and saw the world with his camera,” said Mike Blake, a Reuters colleague. “He was friends with all photographers on the circuit, including those he competed with. It’s a sad day for all of us.”
“He loved what he did,” Duguay said. “He was incredibly generous. He taught himself photography and computers and then taught anybody else who wanted to know, and that included me and colleagues all over the world."
As a staff photographer, Best was what Duguay called “a stalwart” on the Reuters sports events team. Hockey and golf were his specialties.
Gary Hershorn, news editor, Pictures America, remembered Best as a friend and gentleman. “He shot every assignment well and never hesitated to lend a hand editing whenever possible. We will miss his hands on approach to the file,” he said in a note to staff. “We all should consider ourselves lucky to have had Shaun on our staff at Reuters. We benefited from his talent, friendship and willingness to help so many people in so many ways.”
● SOURCE Montreal Gazette | Remembering Shaun Best | Portfolio
Obituary: John Lawrenson
Wednesday 04 May 2011
John Lawrenson, who has died with his wife, was a former Reuters executive who co-wrote a book about events leading up to the 1984 flotation of the company in London and New York.
Lawrenson joined Reuters in 1954 and was manager for European Economic Services when he resigned in 1971. After Reuters he founded Monitor Press, publisher of legal and business newsletters.
The book he wrote with Lionel Barber, now editor of the Financial Times, was The Price of Truth: The Story of the Reuters Millions. Published in 1985, it was billed as “a story of greed and intrigue and of how a small group of men broke a solemn undertaking in their efforts to unlock a treasure house”.
Lawrenson was 80. His wife of 47 years Caroline, 70, was believed to have been suffering from cancer. They died at their home in the village of Great Waldingfield, Suffolk on 23 April. A thanksgiving service will be held at St Lawrence church, Great Waldingfield on 11 May at 2:00 pm. Donations to St Nicholas Hospice, Bury St Edmunds.
● SOURCE The Times | Daily Mail
● The Price of Truth
Lawrenson joined Reuters in 1954 and was manager for European Economic Services when he resigned in 1971. After Reuters he founded Monitor Press, publisher of legal and business newsletters.
The book he wrote with Lionel Barber, now editor of the Financial Times, was The Price of Truth: The Story of the Reuters Millions. Published in 1985, it was billed as “a story of greed and intrigue and of how a small group of men broke a solemn undertaking in their efforts to unlock a treasure house”.
Lawrenson was 80. His wife of 47 years Caroline, 70, was believed to have been suffering from cancer. They died at their home in the village of Great Waldingfield, Suffolk on 23 April. A thanksgiving service will be held at St Lawrence church, Great Waldingfield on 11 May at 2:00 pm. Donations to St Nicholas Hospice, Bury St Edmunds.
● SOURCE The Times | Daily Mail
● The Price of Truth
Obituary: Pat Caton
Thursday 21 April 2011
Pat Caton, who died of a brain tumour on 9 April aged 60, joined Reuters human resources department in 1981 to work with Rachel Addison and Ron Harris. She spent most of her career providing HR administrative support in London within the technical operations and development groups. Pat worked for a brief period for John Ransom and then Mary Talbot, before joining Marion Wale at Maple House and Centros House, and then Docklands. In the last few years before she left in 2003 she was a key member of the centralised HR administration function.
Everyone who worked with Pat admired her efficiency, loyalty and professionalism. She always had a smile on her face and nothing was too much trouble.
While she was working with the technical development department she organised the Christmas event at the Chiswell Street Brewery. Martin Davids remembers how, when the dancing started, Pat made sure everyone joined in.
John Freeman, former head of personnel for Reuters Information, said: “In all the years I knew Pat at Reuters I can never remember an occasion when her sunny disposition did not shine through. She dealt with everything in a straightforward, efficient way and could always be relied upon to see the job through. After I retired, I used to see her at Reuter Society meetings and she always had a smile on her face. Such people are worth their weight in gold and she will be sadly missed.”
Pat married her long-term partner John Banks in December 2009. He supported her at many Reuter events, even when she played hockey on a Sunday morning with a group of Maple/Centros House staff.
Marion Wale
Everyone who worked with Pat admired her efficiency, loyalty and professionalism. She always had a smile on her face and nothing was too much trouble.
While she was working with the technical development department she organised the Christmas event at the Chiswell Street Brewery. Martin Davids remembers how, when the dancing started, Pat made sure everyone joined in.
John Freeman, former head of personnel for Reuters Information, said: “In all the years I knew Pat at Reuters I can never remember an occasion when her sunny disposition did not shine through. She dealt with everything in a straightforward, efficient way and could always be relied upon to see the job through. After I retired, I used to see her at Reuter Society meetings and she always had a smile on her face. Such people are worth their weight in gold and she will be sadly missed.”
Pat married her long-term partner John Banks in December 2009. He supported her at many Reuter events, even when she played hockey on a Sunday morning with a group of Maple/Centros House staff.
Marion Wale
Obituary: Ronald Farquhar
Tuesday 19 April 2011
A Scot from Glasgow who joined Reuters in 1952, he drove over 500 miles in fog on crumbling roads from Warsaw to Budapest in October 1956 to be on the spot to break the news when the Soviet Army put down Hungary’s anti-communist uprising.
Over several days he dodged bullets amid fierce fighting on the streets, filing stories with the help of a trio of women who worked as telephonists in his hotel and once from an ancient telex machine in a rebel command post.
Forced to take refuge in the British embassy when the Soviet command imposed a 24-hour curfew, he still managed to stay on in Budapest until January 1957, becoming one of the last Western reporters to leave when the new authorities ordered him out.
A trooper in the British Army during World War Two, Farquhar survived the destruction of his tank by a German shell in Tunisia, suffering serious facial burns.
When he joined Reuters after six years with local newspapers in Scotland and England, the burns effectively decided his career path after a doctor decreed that he should not expose his face to strong sun and must never have a tropical posting.
A German-speaker, he was first sent to Frankfurt and then in 1955 to Czechoslovakia where he met his future wife Vera, an editorial assistant in the Reuters office in Prague.
Like many Cold War romances between Westerners and East Europeans at the time, theirs ran foul of the communist bureaucracy. They were not allowed to marry and Vera was refused an exit visa when he was transferred to Warsaw in 1956.
For five years they carried on a long-distance relationship, including during the two years he was in Beijing from 1958-60. Finally, the Czechoslovak authorities relented and they were married in Prague in 1960.
In Beijing, he reported on the gradual estrangement between Communist China and the Soviet Union and the flaring of a border dispute with India. “It was a great place to be at the time, totally different to anything else I had known,” he once said.
After Beijing, now with Vera, he went to Belgrade for four years, tracking not only Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s improving relationship with Moscow but also the decline of the “liberal” Yugoslav version of communism.
Over the following years he was in Geneva, specialising in disarmament issues, again in Warsaw and the West German capital Bonn and then back to Geneva from 1973 to 1980.
His last posting before retiring in 1983 was to Vienna where he followed the decline of the Soviet empire and the economies of the Eastern European countries, training many young Reuters journalists whom he infected with his love for the region.
He and Vera, who died in 2008, settled in Geneva, and he worked part-time for Reuters until 1992. He is survived by the couple’s two daughters, Helen and Katarina.
Bob Evans
Obituary: Bill Hartley
Monday 18 April 2011
Most of his career at Reuters was spent on the Nordesk (North America) and later the Westhem (Americas) desk.
Colleagues remember Hartley as always pleasant, amusing and amenable and a great jazz fan.
Obituary: Michael Posner
Friday 11 March 2011
Posner, 79, was a Reuters correspondent on Capitol Hill from 1972 until 1997, during which time he covered every major story in the Senate and the House of Representatives. He knew everyone on the Hill, from long-serving lawmakers to back-office functionaries, and everyone there knew him and regarded him with affection. His knowledge of the US Congress was encyclopaedic, as was his store of anecdotes about the movers and shakers of American politics.
During congressional recesses he also covered politics, presidential election campaigns and presidential trips.
Prior to joining Reuters Posner was with UPI from 1959. Even after retirement, he couldn’t stay away from congressional politics, and wrote for a Washington magazine group, National Journal’s Congress Daily.
● Good talk, big drinks and friendly fisticuffs – Michael Posner’s account of life in Washington journalists’ haunts.
● National Journal
Photo: Andrea Posner
Obituary: Richard Williams
Sunday 27 February 2011
Richard Williams, who died on 11 February at the age of 56, had a 30-year career with Reuters before taking early retirement last year. He was a correspondent in Johannesburg during the apartheid years, in Bonn in the then West Germany and in East Berlin where Reuters correspondents were constantly monitored and shadowed by East Germany's Stasi secret police.
Editors noted he was calm under fire and colleagues said he was someone you could always turn to for help, whether it was personal or work-related. Richard later worked as a chief sub-editor on the Features Desk and World Desk, as well as going on fireman assignments that included the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was duty editor on the night the US-led war in Afghanistan began in late 2001 and won praise for his usual calm and quiet handling of the story.
Underscoring his popularity with colleagues, Richard was elected deputy head of the Reuters Chapel of the National Union of Journalists for many years. He and Chapel head Victoria Barrett formed a formidable negotiating team that was respected by management.
Born in the Merseyside town of Wallasey, Richard went on to obtain a MA in History at Glasgow University and joined Reuters as a graduate trainee. He was fluent in French and German and had a good working knowledge of Russian, Spanish and Afrikaans. His dry and wry wit lightened many a day, and the words “loathsome creature” would trip off his tongue whenever he spotted anyone trumpeting how good they were to superiors or riding roughshod over colleagues. For Richard, Reuters was all about quiet team-work.
The funeral took place at the crematorium in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on 24 February. A memorial gathering is planned in London in the near future for Richard's Reuters colleagues and will be attended by representatives of his family. Donations can be made to Richard's favourite charity: Amnesty International UK, The Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard,
London EC2A 3EA, +44 20 7033 1500.
RG
Editors noted he was calm under fire and colleagues said he was someone you could always turn to for help, whether it was personal or work-related. Richard later worked as a chief sub-editor on the Features Desk and World Desk, as well as going on fireman assignments that included the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was duty editor on the night the US-led war in Afghanistan began in late 2001 and won praise for his usual calm and quiet handling of the story.
Underscoring his popularity with colleagues, Richard was elected deputy head of the Reuters Chapel of the National Union of Journalists for many years. He and Chapel head Victoria Barrett formed a formidable negotiating team that was respected by management.
Born in the Merseyside town of Wallasey, Richard went on to obtain a MA in History at Glasgow University and joined Reuters as a graduate trainee. He was fluent in French and German and had a good working knowledge of Russian, Spanish and Afrikaans. His dry and wry wit lightened many a day, and the words “loathsome creature” would trip off his tongue whenever he spotted anyone trumpeting how good they were to superiors or riding roughshod over colleagues. For Richard, Reuters was all about quiet team-work.
The funeral took place at the crematorium in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on 24 February. A memorial gathering is planned in London in the near future for Richard's Reuters colleagues and will be attended by representatives of his family. Donations can be made to Richard's favourite charity: Amnesty International UK, The Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard,
London EC2A 3EA, +44 20 7033 1500.
RG
Obituary: Ron Sly
Saturday 15 January 2011
He had been admitted to hospital just before Christmas after a couple of falls and then contracted pneumonia. His son Christopher and daughter Jennifer said he died peacefully on 6 January with his family at the bedside.
Sly joined Reuters in 1965 from The Associated Press in the first wave of a succession of experienced journalists who transferred from the American agency’s London office. At the AP he had established a reputation as a solid deskman and at 85 Fleet Street, then Reuters' headquarters, he was quickly recognised as an editor who could make the most mundane copy sing. He became a senior member of a strong editing team producing Reuters World Service. On retirement in 1987 he was a chief sub-editor.
Michael Reupke, former editor-in-chief, remembers Sly as a constant bright light in the editorial department. “His wonderful smile and cheery greeting brightened even the gloomiest day.”
Sly's widow, Morag, is herself in hospital.
The funeral will be at Harwood Park Crematorium, Stevenage, on 28 January at 11:45 am.
Postscript: Morag Sly died on 3 February.
Photo: A World Desk party in 1988 shortly after Ron Sly’s retirement. Around the table, left to right, are Terry Blunsum, Ernie Mendoza, François Duriaud, Dave Matthew, Jim Flannery, Ron Sly and Peter Seymour.
Obituary: Aubrey Higgs
Wednesday 27 October 2010
John Freeman remembers him as one of the nicest people you could ever meet and absolutely devoted to Reuters.
“The love of his journalistic life was tennis. He lived close to the Wimbledon courts and ran our coverage impeccably for more years than I can remember,” Freeman said. “He was conscientious to a fault – making young upstarts like me adhere to the basic Reuters tenets of speed and accuracy.”
Jon Henderson, who worked with Higgs for five or six years before he retired at the age of 59 in the mid-1970s, remembers him as an extremely nice, courteous and straightforward man and the last of a generation of sports desk grandees that also included Vernon Morgan and Claude Richardson.
“One of his great contributions to Reuters was his tennis coverage. He was a regular at Wimbledon for many years and also covered the French Open at Roland Garros.”
● Gallery of Aubrey Higgs in Reuters-related photos
Obituary: Vladimir Raitz
Friday 10 September 2010
Vladimir Raitz, who has died aged 88, interpreted foreign radio news broadcasts for Reuters in the 1940s but was best known for pioneering the all-inclusive no-frills package holiday in the days of Britain’s post-war austerity and rationing.
Born into a middle class Jewish family in Moscow in 1922, in 1928 he emigrated with his mother, a dentist, to Berlin where her parents had fled, leaving behind his father, a doctor, whom he would never see again. His mother remarried and they moved with her second husband to Warsaw. His stepfather was one of the Polish officers murdered at Katyn.
Raitz arrived in London in 1936 speaking Russian, Polish, French and German, but no English. After graduating from the London School of Economics, where he read history, he joined Reuters in 1943 and monitored foreign news broadcasts. He was still working for Reuters when, in 1949, his grandmother died, leaving him £3,000. He left the agency, using his inheritance to establish Horizon Holidays with an office in Fleet Street. He had the idea when staying with a baron in Corsica.
On Horizon’s first trip to Corsica in 1950 holidaymakers paid £32 10s all-inclusive for a six-hour flight aboard a government-surplus Dakota DC3 to a holiday in the sun with a canvas tent on the beach, "delicious meat-filled meals and as much local wine as [you] could put away". At first he was permitted to carry only teachers and students – other occupations were banned – who could take only £50.
Raitz knew he had started a social revolution, not only giving the man in the street holidays abroad but also making him more cosmopolitan, broadening his mind and his palate with a taste for wine and foreign food.
In 1970 he invented Club 18-30 which under subsequent ownership became a byword for booze and sex in the sun.
Horizon Holidays, battered by the oil price shocks, folded in 1974. Raitz remained one of the principal players in the British tour operating business for 25 years, acquiring Skytours and Riviera Holidays on behalf of the Thomson organisation to form Thomson Holidays.
Raitz was always a proud Muscovite with a fondness for vodka and Russian songs, a ready laugh “and a stubborn urge to organise”. He was co-author, with Roger Bray, of Flight to The Sun: the Story of the Holiday Revolution, published in 2001.
Raitz died on 31 August.
● SOURCE The Economist | The Daily Telegraph
Born into a middle class Jewish family in Moscow in 1922, in 1928 he emigrated with his mother, a dentist, to Berlin where her parents had fled, leaving behind his father, a doctor, whom he would never see again. His mother remarried and they moved with her second husband to Warsaw. His stepfather was one of the Polish officers murdered at Katyn.
Raitz arrived in London in 1936 speaking Russian, Polish, French and German, but no English. After graduating from the London School of Economics, where he read history, he joined Reuters in 1943 and monitored foreign news broadcasts. He was still working for Reuters when, in 1949, his grandmother died, leaving him £3,000. He left the agency, using his inheritance to establish Horizon Holidays with an office in Fleet Street. He had the idea when staying with a baron in Corsica.
On Horizon’s first trip to Corsica in 1950 holidaymakers paid £32 10s all-inclusive for a six-hour flight aboard a government-surplus Dakota DC3 to a holiday in the sun with a canvas tent on the beach, "delicious meat-filled meals and as much local wine as [you] could put away". At first he was permitted to carry only teachers and students – other occupations were banned – who could take only £50.
Raitz knew he had started a social revolution, not only giving the man in the street holidays abroad but also making him more cosmopolitan, broadening his mind and his palate with a taste for wine and foreign food.
In 1970 he invented Club 18-30 which under subsequent ownership became a byword for booze and sex in the sun.
Horizon Holidays, battered by the oil price shocks, folded in 1974. Raitz remained one of the principal players in the British tour operating business for 25 years, acquiring Skytours and Riviera Holidays on behalf of the Thomson organisation to form Thomson Holidays.
Raitz was always a proud Muscovite with a fondness for vodka and Russian songs, a ready laugh “and a stubborn urge to organise”. He was co-author, with Roger Bray, of Flight to The Sun: the Story of the Holiday Revolution, published in 2001.
Raitz died on 31 August.
● SOURCE The Economist | The Daily Telegraph
Obituary: Duncan McWhirter
Friday 23 July 2010
Duncan McWhirter, a Winnipeg-born Canadian who worked on Reuters World Desk in London from 1964 to 1968, died in Vancouver on 20 July, aged 75, after a stroke and a succession of complications.
In addition to being a journalist of wide experience, McWhirter was a novelist, short-story writer and cartoonist. His cosmopolitan lifestyle took him to continental Europe, North Africa and Latin America between long residential stretches in London’s Islington district and diverse parts of western Canada.
Through his mother, Duncan was half Icelandic and Reykjavik featured both on his international itinerary and his fiction. His novels include such Canadian settings as Winnipeg, too, and the rugged northern Ontario region of Thunder Bay, where he spent part of his youth.
McWhirter received a rousing educational boost at the University of Toronto. He graduated with an honours degree in English and Modern History after studying under such mentors as Canada’s most provocative historian, Donald Creighton.
His news agency career started with stints in 1962-64 at The Canadian Press in Toronto and Montreal. As a CP man myself, I first met him in the latter news cauldron. There I helped him cover an event even rowdier than the Quebec separatist furore of the time – the 1964 invasion of Montreal by The Beatles. We were both left all-shook-up by this searing experience.
The adventurous McWhirter, by this time privately crafting an assortment of hard-edge short stories, headed for Swinging London in 1964 and landed a sub-editor’s post at Reuters. His four years there were ones of all-round World Desk service together with enjoyment of the period’s mellow social scene in both Fleet Street and Islington to the north. Islington had yet to descend into gentrification and McWhirter led me, as a visitor from Montreal, on fascinating rounds of the earthy local pub circuit from his raffish Essex Road flat next door to a funeral parlour. Plainly, his environs were a rich and raucous feeding ground for this droll observer’s evolving interest in fiction-writing.
Having left Reuters in 1968, he took up globe-trotting along with spells of work as a writer and cartoonist for papers in western Canada.
Back in London, he spent time on a smaller news agency and performed journalistic duties for British Columbia’s busy office in the UK capital.
It was there that he encountered the legendary leader of the Canadian Pacific province, WAC Bennett, later telling of how the visiting “Wacky” loudly insisted on being addressed as Prime Minister of BC rather than by his official designation as a Premier.
By 1979, McWhirter had gone to the Overseas Press Section of the British government’s Central Office of Information, where he stayed until his return to Canada in 1998.
He’d met his wife, Jody, in Victoria, BC, in 1976 while doing research on aboriginal Indian land claims for the provincial government – another instance of his versatility and a useful outlet for his university training in historical investigation.
It wasn’t till 2000 that Duncan the novelist was published for the first time. Trafford of Victoria issued White Houses, the story of a torturous love relationship that unfolded against backdrops ranging from Morocco and Iceland to the American enclave of Point Roberts, bizarrely located within British Columbia’s territorial spectrum. Evident all through White Houses and two later McWhirter novels published by Trafford – The Paper-Boy and The Girl in the Grass – was a born travel-writer’s skill for evoking weird, far-away settings and a Graham Greene-like gift for magnifying the plight of the forlorn loners who swarm in the modern city’s seedy barrens.
One of my most memorable jaunts with Duncan was a trip to the haunting shoreline near Vancouver once inhabited by the English novelist Malcolm Lowry, of Under the Volcano fame. As a poet, Lowry spoke of finding no path forward for the world’s rootless outsiders, there being only “a river in spate/Where drowning forms, downswept, gesticulate.”
In recent years, Duncan and Jody lived in a handsome central Vancouver apartment, where he was working on successors to his first three novels when taken to hospital in May.
All through our friendship, Dunc often addressed me, with mischievous jocularity, as “Fo”, a legacy from the Montreal days when erratic teletype operators somehow mangled my byline of Cy Fox into Cy Sox, C. Fox, Cy Cox or a nice oriental variant, Cy Fo. I won’t soon forget that unique McWhirter salutation, “Hello, Fo!”
Cy Fox
● Duncan McWhirter’s books
In addition to being a journalist of wide experience, McWhirter was a novelist, short-story writer and cartoonist. His cosmopolitan lifestyle took him to continental Europe, North Africa and Latin America between long residential stretches in London’s Islington district and diverse parts of western Canada.
Through his mother, Duncan was half Icelandic and Reykjavik featured both on his international itinerary and his fiction. His novels include such Canadian settings as Winnipeg, too, and the rugged northern Ontario region of Thunder Bay, where he spent part of his youth.
McWhirter received a rousing educational boost at the University of Toronto. He graduated with an honours degree in English and Modern History after studying under such mentors as Canada’s most provocative historian, Donald Creighton.
His news agency career started with stints in 1962-64 at The Canadian Press in Toronto and Montreal. As a CP man myself, I first met him in the latter news cauldron. There I helped him cover an event even rowdier than the Quebec separatist furore of the time – the 1964 invasion of Montreal by The Beatles. We were both left all-shook-up by this searing experience.
The adventurous McWhirter, by this time privately crafting an assortment of hard-edge short stories, headed for Swinging London in 1964 and landed a sub-editor’s post at Reuters. His four years there were ones of all-round World Desk service together with enjoyment of the period’s mellow social scene in both Fleet Street and Islington to the north. Islington had yet to descend into gentrification and McWhirter led me, as a visitor from Montreal, on fascinating rounds of the earthy local pub circuit from his raffish Essex Road flat next door to a funeral parlour. Plainly, his environs were a rich and raucous feeding ground for this droll observer’s evolving interest in fiction-writing.
Having left Reuters in 1968, he took up globe-trotting along with spells of work as a writer and cartoonist for papers in western Canada.
Back in London, he spent time on a smaller news agency and performed journalistic duties for British Columbia’s busy office in the UK capital.
It was there that he encountered the legendary leader of the Canadian Pacific province, WAC Bennett, later telling of how the visiting “Wacky” loudly insisted on being addressed as Prime Minister of BC rather than by his official designation as a Premier.
By 1979, McWhirter had gone to the Overseas Press Section of the British government’s Central Office of Information, where he stayed until his return to Canada in 1998.
He’d met his wife, Jody, in Victoria, BC, in 1976 while doing research on aboriginal Indian land claims for the provincial government – another instance of his versatility and a useful outlet for his university training in historical investigation.
It wasn’t till 2000 that Duncan the novelist was published for the first time. Trafford of Victoria issued White Houses, the story of a torturous love relationship that unfolded against backdrops ranging from Morocco and Iceland to the American enclave of Point Roberts, bizarrely located within British Columbia’s territorial spectrum. Evident all through White Houses and two later McWhirter novels published by Trafford – The Paper-Boy and The Girl in the Grass – was a born travel-writer’s skill for evoking weird, far-away settings and a Graham Greene-like gift for magnifying the plight of the forlorn loners who swarm in the modern city’s seedy barrens.
One of my most memorable jaunts with Duncan was a trip to the haunting shoreline near Vancouver once inhabited by the English novelist Malcolm Lowry, of Under the Volcano fame. As a poet, Lowry spoke of finding no path forward for the world’s rootless outsiders, there being only “a river in spate/Where drowning forms, downswept, gesticulate.”
In recent years, Duncan and Jody lived in a handsome central Vancouver apartment, where he was working on successors to his first three novels when taken to hospital in May.
All through our friendship, Dunc often addressed me, with mischievous jocularity, as “Fo”, a legacy from the Montreal days when erratic teletype operators somehow mangled my byline of Cy Fox into Cy Sox, C. Fox, Cy Cox or a nice oriental variant, Cy Fo. I won’t soon forget that unique McWhirter salutation, “Hello, Fo!”
Cy Fox
● Duncan McWhirter’s books
Obituary: Thomas Ingham
Sunday 20 June 2010
Thomas Ingham, who has died of cancer in Thailand, was an information technology linch-pin during a period of exponential growth at Reuters.
He joined the company in the early 1970s, along with Dennis Moore, Mike Gharibian and a few others, at the start of a new period in Reuters, Doug Bliss remembers.
“Until he joined, only the 4th floor workshop at 85 Fleet Street ran a 24/7 operation. The shifts were expanded and three new groups were formed – Editorial, Communications and Retrievals. Each group was made up of Peripheral Technicians, Computer Technicians and Engineers. Tom was, as to be expected, one of the elite in the new Retrievals group, looking after the Quotes and Monitor systems. Tom was one of the shift leaders at nights and weekends and spent much of the day shifts teaching and helping the up-and-coming young techies, such as me, Bert Plummer, Peter Blake, et al in the new ways of the world. Tom was not the only helpful one, all the new guys were really supportive in our new roles and we have much to thank them for.”
Towards the end of the 1970s, the company began to expand exponentially and two new groups were formed, Communications Systems Group and Retrieval Systems Group, the latter under Phil Arnett and Dredge Liversedge. “Both Tom and I joined RSG, and that began a whole new chapter in both our lives,” Bliss said. “Tom was with Phil running major systems upgrades and projects, I was with Dredge on country expansion projects. The first overseas trip I did was with Tom, to visit the Paris Bourse and the Reuters Data Centre. At the end of the first, gruelling day, Tom suggested we find somewhere to eat. Great, I thought, a nice meal in a swanky Parisienne restaurant, just the ticket after a hard day of fact-finding. We ended up in the latest craze to hit Paris – a McDonalds! I haven’t been to one since.”
RSG and CSG eventually outgrew their usefulness and were disbanded in 1981.
Ingham was a first class engineer and soon after joinging from ICL became a specialist on the Second Generation Slave, which was then Reuters’ new cutting edge quotes system, Ken Pratt recalls. At this time Reuters was also introducing the Reuter Monitor and new communications systems. “It was soon realised by Patrick Mannix that there was a need for a small team of specialist engineers to provide worldwide support for these systems and the operations engineering group was formed. Later I took over this group and it became clear that the members of the group were losing their expertise by not being involved in the systems on a day to day basis. Patrick decided that it would be better to pay the best engineers a retainer to keep up to date on their systems worldwide and to give a commitment to provide support for any data centre within 24 hours. Tom was the obvious choice to support the SGS and was very well respected for his expertise. The group became known as the sandbaggers after a popular TV show of the time.
“In true Reuters tradition Tom was totally dependable, great fun socially and very proud to have been part of those pioneering days.”
Ingham took over the RA technical liaison role from Doug Bliss in 1985. “Together with Steve Somerville on the management side, Tom became the rock in London on whom we all depended,” said Phil Arnett, former director of product quality. “The Reuters Asia area at the time included the Middle East and the less sophisticated South East Asia markets. The needs were complex and the countries demanding. I cannot remember Tom failing to sort out a problem be it sourcing parts or providing information for generally obstructive PTTs. For the last two years of his career he was mainly based in Hong Kong continuing to provide the support for which we had all been so grateful.”
"Tom worked with me in Peter Job's 'Asian Embassy' in London,” Stephen Somerville said. “An engaging character with a huge network of contacts, he was invaluable as chief fixer at Head Office for all Reuters Asia's technical innovations. He turned the job into an art form."
After his passing on 27 May, Ingham's body was taken to the Sri Phan Temple in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, where he lay adorned with flowers and two large pictures of him in golfing clothing and sunglasses. A Buddhist ceremony was held and after cremation his wife Ann scattered his ashes on the River Ping, which flows through Chiang Mai.
Colleagues of Tom Ingham are to meet at The Old Bell, Fleet Street from 4:30 pm on Thursday 24 June to remember him.
He joined the company in the early 1970s, along with Dennis Moore, Mike Gharibian and a few others, at the start of a new period in Reuters, Doug Bliss remembers.
“Until he joined, only the 4th floor workshop at 85 Fleet Street ran a 24/7 operation. The shifts were expanded and three new groups were formed – Editorial, Communications and Retrievals. Each group was made up of Peripheral Technicians, Computer Technicians and Engineers. Tom was, as to be expected, one of the elite in the new Retrievals group, looking after the Quotes and Monitor systems. Tom was one of the shift leaders at nights and weekends and spent much of the day shifts teaching and helping the up-and-coming young techies, such as me, Bert Plummer, Peter Blake, et al in the new ways of the world. Tom was not the only helpful one, all the new guys were really supportive in our new roles and we have much to thank them for.”
Towards the end of the 1970s, the company began to expand exponentially and two new groups were formed, Communications Systems Group and Retrieval Systems Group, the latter under Phil Arnett and Dredge Liversedge. “Both Tom and I joined RSG, and that began a whole new chapter in both our lives,” Bliss said. “Tom was with Phil running major systems upgrades and projects, I was with Dredge on country expansion projects. The first overseas trip I did was with Tom, to visit the Paris Bourse and the Reuters Data Centre. At the end of the first, gruelling day, Tom suggested we find somewhere to eat. Great, I thought, a nice meal in a swanky Parisienne restaurant, just the ticket after a hard day of fact-finding. We ended up in the latest craze to hit Paris – a McDonalds! I haven’t been to one since.”
RSG and CSG eventually outgrew their usefulness and were disbanded in 1981.
Ingham was a first class engineer and soon after joinging from ICL became a specialist on the Second Generation Slave, which was then Reuters’ new cutting edge quotes system, Ken Pratt recalls. At this time Reuters was also introducing the Reuter Monitor and new communications systems. “It was soon realised by Patrick Mannix that there was a need for a small team of specialist engineers to provide worldwide support for these systems and the operations engineering group was formed. Later I took over this group and it became clear that the members of the group were losing their expertise by not being involved in the systems on a day to day basis. Patrick decided that it would be better to pay the best engineers a retainer to keep up to date on their systems worldwide and to give a commitment to provide support for any data centre within 24 hours. Tom was the obvious choice to support the SGS and was very well respected for his expertise. The group became known as the sandbaggers after a popular TV show of the time.
“In true Reuters tradition Tom was totally dependable, great fun socially and very proud to have been part of those pioneering days.”
Ingham took over the RA technical liaison role from Doug Bliss in 1985. “Together with Steve Somerville on the management side, Tom became the rock in London on whom we all depended,” said Phil Arnett, former director of product quality. “The Reuters Asia area at the time included the Middle East and the less sophisticated South East Asia markets. The needs were complex and the countries demanding. I cannot remember Tom failing to sort out a problem be it sourcing parts or providing information for generally obstructive PTTs. For the last two years of his career he was mainly based in Hong Kong continuing to provide the support for which we had all been so grateful.”
"Tom worked with me in Peter Job's 'Asian Embassy' in London,” Stephen Somerville said. “An engaging character with a huge network of contacts, he was invaluable as chief fixer at Head Office for all Reuters Asia's technical innovations. He turned the job into an art form."
After his passing on 27 May, Ingham's body was taken to the Sri Phan Temple in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, where he lay adorned with flowers and two large pictures of him in golfing clothing and sunglasses. A Buddhist ceremony was held and after cremation his wife Ann scattered his ashes on the River Ping, which flows through Chiang Mai.
Colleagues of Tom Ingham are to meet at The Old Bell, Fleet Street from 4:30 pm on Thursday 24 June to remember him.
Obituary: Hugh Pain
Friday 26 February 2010
Pain was in a Reuters armoured Land Rover that ran over an anti-tank mine in Bosnia in January 1993. Both his heels were shattered and he came under fire from a sniper. His dry sense of humour remained intact, however, and he began his report on the incident as follows:
“I had often wondered what it would be like to die.
“Now I know, or near enough to satisfy curiosity,” he wrote from Vitez, Bosnia-Herzegovina under the headline: “The sensation of a huge force...”
“The anti-tank mine that detonated on Monday in the west-central Bosnian town of Gornji Vakuf, where we had gone to report on fighting between Moslems and Croats, had up to three kg (6.6 pounds) of explosive in it.
“It was enough to reduce our armoured Land Rover to a twisted heap of wreckage as it ran over it.
“And more than enough to kill us all, according to British army engineers who inspected it afterwards.
“The good news from the near-death front is that you don't have time to be scared.”
Corinne Dufka, photographer, and Kevin Sullivan, UPI correspondent, were travelling with Pain and were also wounded.
Pain was an avid collector of first edition books and before his war injury a keen tennis player. Previous assignments included Italy, Iran and India. Later, he worked as an editor on the business news unit and other production desks in London including the world desk. He had joined Reuters in 1977 and retired in 2003.
Pain’s elder son Nick said that his father had been in Heraklion hospital since 8 February and was his normal, perfectly lucid self for much of the time.
At around 8:00 pm on Wednesday Pain took his oxygen mask off and said "D'you know, I'm getting really rather bored with this." He died at 5:45 am the following morning.
Burial is on Saturday close to his home in Agia Galini, Crete, where he lived with his wife, Caroline. A memorial service will be arranged later.
● CLICK to read Hugh Pain’s account of being blown up in Bosnia.
Obituary: Christian Wiessner
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Wiessner’s partner Ellen Wulfhorst, a general news journalist in New York, was with him.
Wiessner joined Reuters in January 1990, initially covering the coffee market. Colleagues described him as a talented editor who brought considerable expertise and a deft touch as a writer to everything he produced. He did so with an unfailingly good humour, a brusque charm and a diplomat’s ability to broker the best edit from every story.
A passionate musician, Wiessner brought life and light to the newsroom.
He is survived by his wife Kelly and children Kati, 17, and son James, who turns 16 this month.
Photo: Christian Wiessner with partner Ellen Wulfhorst
● SOURCE Reuters
Obituary: Gordon Cook
Friday 11 September 2009
Gordon Cook, who died recently aged 83, was for many years Reuters’ assistant pensions manager.
He joined the accounts department on 30 December 1968 as pension fund accountant, becoming assistant pensions manager to Bill Ogston in 1977, a position he continued to hold until his retirement in February 1991. Prior to joining Reuters he had been an accountant with Marconi from 1950.
Cook died on 21 July after a short illness.
He joined the accounts department on 30 December 1968 as pension fund accountant, becoming assistant pensions manager to Bill Ogston in 1977, a position he continued to hold until his retirement in February 1991. Prior to joining Reuters he had been an accountant with Marconi from 1950.
Cook died on 21 July after a short illness.
David Nicholson's memory honoured in wine
Sunday 09 August 2009
The toast to a great man, great editor and great friend was raised at a reception after a thanksgiving service for the life of Nicholson, former Night Editor on the World Desk, London, who died on 2 August aged 68.
A piper played a lament at Penge Congregational Church on Friday and a tribute was delivered by Nicholson’s daughter, Sarah. Bible readings were by his son Alec and brother Graeme.
Among the mourners were Jim and Marita Anderson, Ron Askew, Richard Balmforth, Allan Barker, David and Patricia Betts, Graham Colville, Monica Cook, Sandy Critchley, David Cutler, François Duriaud, John Freeman, Robert Hart, Graham and Ann Hillier, Keith Holland, Carol Howard, Michael Hughes, Colin McIntyre, Ian MacKenzie, Bernard Melunsky, Helen Massey, Barry and Dolly May, Ernest Mendoza, Peter Millership, Nicholas Moore, John Morrison, Rick Norsworthy, Tim Pearce, Manfred Pagel, John Rogers, Bill and Lesley Saltmarsh, Len Santorelli, Paul Smurthwaite, Anthony Williams and Richard Williams.
Photo by Helen Brushett shows David Nicholson on 12 July while listening to a Bach string quartet.
Obituary: David Nicholson
Sunday 02 August 2009
Raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Nicholson began his working life as a copy boy with The Canadian Press before becoming a journalist and later moving to Toronto. After a spell back in Halifax he was sent to New York and when the CP bureau there closed in 1973 he met George Short, then working on Reuters’ desk at 1700 Broadway. Nicholson joined Reuters and in 1975 transferred to London where he quickly became a member of the senior World Desk establishment.
Among a number of short stints abroad was a spell in Buenos Aires in 1982 editing reports from the Argentine side of the Falklands War – a time when UK passport holders could not work there.
Nicholson retired in 2001. He was a knowledgeable jazz aficionado with a love of music that extended to other genres. Baseball was also a passion.
He leaves a wife, Marilyn, two children, Alec and Sarah, and three grandchildren.
The funeral will be at Beckenham Crematorium at 9:00 am on Friday 7 August. A memorial service will be held at Penge Congregational Church, 172 High Street, Penge at 3:00 pm.
In the photo Nicholson is seen with long-time colleague Evelyn Leopold at The Baron's Bash, a Reuters editorial reunion, on 30 March 2009. Photo: Patricia Betts
● Halifax Chronicle Herald announcement
Obituary: Brian Horton
Sunday 26 July 2009
Born in the UK to New Zealand parents, Horton came from a family with a journalistic background. The family moved back to New Zealand following the outbreak of World War II.
He joined Reuters as a graduate trainee in December 1957 and after a series of reporting and editing assignments, including training under Gerald Long in Germany, became European news editor in 1964 and chief news editor in 1965.
In October 1968 he was appointed editor-in-chief and assistant general manager, in charge of the General News Division (GND) which had been set up by Long in July 1967 as a profit centre alongside Reuters Economic Services (RES) headed by Michael Nelson.
Eager to push maximum use of technology, Horton had already played the leading part in the pioneering introduction of Automatic Data Exchange, a computerised message storing and switching system known as ADX, in July 1968. ADX made possible the editing of English-language regional services from one central position, the World Desk, rather than from numerous regional desks.
He set out to balance GND revenue and costs but this was impossible if only because of the nature of the competition – Agence France-Presse with its state subsidy, The Associated Press with its revenue cushion from U.S. media, and the new and flourishing newspaper syndication services that cut into media cash available for news agency services.
Horton was keen on Reuters breaking with national agency cartels, leading to the launch of the German service and then of a French service sold to French media. “You are not allowed to do this,” the head of AFP said. “La mechante agence anglaise” said President Pompidou with a smile.
GND failed to turn a profit and Horton contained news costs by cutting staff numbers in London. At the end of 1973 GND was replaced by Reuters World Service, designated as a cost centre. Horton resigned and went into the wine business, moving to Gaucín near Málaga in southern Spain with his second wife Jane and children in 1976.
When Long left Reuters and became managing director of Times Newspapers in 1981 he called Horton back to London and made him foreign editor of The Times. He was in this position for a year before briefly becoming managing editor. He then moved on to become News International's director of development. His first project was The Times Network for Schools, before putting News International into satellite broadcasting by acquiring a small company called Sky Channel. He then oversaw its development over the first few years.
Rupert Murdoch eased Long out of News International, where he had become deputy chairman, in 1984. Horton left News International towards the end of 1986, returning to Spain where he spent his retirement.
The photo was taken at the recent wedding of his son, Robert.
● CLICK to read the obituary published by The Times on 2 August.
Obituary: Peter Blake
Tuesday 21 July 2009
Peter Blake, technical manager during a Reuters career of 35 years, died on 9 July aged 59. He had been ill with cancer for several months.
His initial role when he joined the company in 1965 was teleprinter mechanic technician one. His career developed and progressed to various stages in Reuters engineering. His last post before retiring in 2000 was technical manager for Reuters Editorial Systems (ISYS) within the Reuters News Service Group based at Gray's Inn Road, London.
On retirement Blake held a part-time job with Pimlico Plumbers but his love and passion and interest outside his job was being an active member of the Royal Yeomanry, Territorial Army. He rose to the rank of Captain and in 2006 was honoured with The Queen’s Volunteer Reserves Medal (QVRM) for his length of service and duties.
His initial role when he joined the company in 1965 was teleprinter mechanic technician one. His career developed and progressed to various stages in Reuters engineering. His last post before retiring in 2000 was technical manager for Reuters Editorial Systems (ISYS) within the Reuters News Service Group based at Gray's Inn Road, London.
On retirement Blake held a part-time job with Pimlico Plumbers but his love and passion and interest outside his job was being an active member of the Royal Yeomanry, Territorial Army. He rose to the rank of Captain and in 2006 was honoured with The Queen’s Volunteer Reserves Medal (QVRM) for his length of service and duties.
Obituary: Doreen Vaughan
Monday 06 July 2009
Doreen Vaughan, a popular figure at Reuters’ head office in London during a 25-year career, died of cancer on 25 June, five weeks before her 78th birthday.
She started as a general office typist in 1965 and later became PA/secretary to a succession of senior executives in the Finance Department until leaving the company in 1990.
The funeral is at City of London Crematorium, Manor Park, on 8 July at 12:15 pm. Donations in her memory can be made to St Joseph’s Hospice, Mare Street, Hackney.
She started as a general office typist in 1965 and later became PA/secretary to a succession of senior executives in the Finance Department until leaving the company in 1990.
The funeral is at City of London Crematorium, Manor Park, on 8 July at 12:15 pm. Donations in her memory can be made to St Joseph’s Hospice, Mare Street, Hackney.
Jack Henry remembered
Monday 06 July 2009
Jack Henry, former editor of Reuters World Service who died on 6 May aged 92, was remembered on Monday as “an ordinary participant in some of the great events of the 20th century ... who remained utterly lucid and interested in the news until the day he died”.
An obituary in The Guardian by his son-in-law Jeremy Gavron said he was “an East End boy who became a captain in the British army during the Second World War and was later both home editor and world service editor at Reuters. He always seemed to me the best kind of living history – not a central player, but an ordinary participant in some of the great events of the 20th century.
“His brother and sister became a tailor and a milliner like their parents, but Jack – born Henry Jack Hirschberg near Brick Lane, east London – was drawn to the wider world. Aged nine he would go to Hyde Park to watch the soldiers and workers during the General Strike of 1926. As a teenager he took part in the movement against Oswald Mosley in the East End. He was a good boxer, but he was told not to strike the first punch and when, while he was forming a human barricade, a blackshirt spat in his face, Jack simply held his ground.
“In the war he served as an officer in the Royal Artillery. Promoted to captain, he was sent to Berlin within a few days of its fall, where his responsibilities included requisitioning houses for the army. Arriving one day to find a crowd of Germans refusing to leave their homes Jack stood up in his jeep, rapped his stick on the side and said in German: ‘I am a British officer and a Jew.’ The crowd dispersed.
“After the war Jack returned to Germany as a Reuters correspondent, working in Berlin, Frankfurt, Bonn and later Vienna and Geneva. His work brought him into contact with world leaders such as Vyacheslav Molotov, Zhou Enlai and President Dwight Eisenhower. When he returned to London, he rose through the ranks at Reuters. After his retirement he taught on the journalism course at City University and continued to go to Highbury, where he had first watched Arsenal play in the late 1920s. He was 87 when he saw his last live game. He remained utterly lucid and interested in the news until the day he died.”
● SOURCE The Guardian
● Obituary
An obituary in The Guardian by his son-in-law Jeremy Gavron said he was “an East End boy who became a captain in the British army during the Second World War and was later both home editor and world service editor at Reuters. He always seemed to me the best kind of living history – not a central player, but an ordinary participant in some of the great events of the 20th century.
“His brother and sister became a tailor and a milliner like their parents, but Jack – born Henry Jack Hirschberg near Brick Lane, east London – was drawn to the wider world. Aged nine he would go to Hyde Park to watch the soldiers and workers during the General Strike of 1926. As a teenager he took part in the movement against Oswald Mosley in the East End. He was a good boxer, but he was told not to strike the first punch and when, while he was forming a human barricade, a blackshirt spat in his face, Jack simply held his ground.
“In the war he served as an officer in the Royal Artillery. Promoted to captain, he was sent to Berlin within a few days of its fall, where his responsibilities included requisitioning houses for the army. Arriving one day to find a crowd of Germans refusing to leave their homes Jack stood up in his jeep, rapped his stick on the side and said in German: ‘I am a British officer and a Jew.’ The crowd dispersed.
“After the war Jack returned to Germany as a Reuters correspondent, working in Berlin, Frankfurt, Bonn and later Vienna and Geneva. His work brought him into contact with world leaders such as Vyacheslav Molotov, Zhou Enlai and President Dwight Eisenhower. When he returned to London, he rose through the ranks at Reuters. After his retirement he taught on the journalism course at City University and continued to go to Highbury, where he had first watched Arsenal play in the late 1920s. He was 87 when he saw his last live game. He remained utterly lucid and interested in the news until the day he died.”
● SOURCE The Guardian
● Obituary
Obituary: François Giuliani
Monday 22 June 2009
François Giuliani, former Reuters correspondent who later served as spokesman for three United Nations secretaries-general, died on Monday aged 70.
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said Giuliani, who was French, died after a brief illness. Officials said he was on vacation at the time in Bruges, Belgium.
Giuliani worked as a correspondent in London and Africa for 10 years before joining the UN in 1971.
In 1976 he was appointed spokesman for then secretary-general Kurt Waldheim. He performed the same role for Waldheim's successor, Javier Perez de Cuellar and, for one year, for Boutros Boutros Ghali.
In 1996 he left the United Nations to become director of press and public relations for New York's Metropolitan Opera. He retired from the Met in 2006.
Born in Algiers, Giuliani was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Oxford University.
● SOURCE Reuters
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said Giuliani, who was French, died after a brief illness. Officials said he was on vacation at the time in Bruges, Belgium.
Giuliani worked as a correspondent in London and Africa for 10 years before joining the UN in 1971.
In 1976 he was appointed spokesman for then secretary-general Kurt Waldheim. He performed the same role for Waldheim's successor, Javier Perez de Cuellar and, for one year, for Boutros Boutros Ghali.
In 1996 he left the United Nations to become director of press and public relations for New York's Metropolitan Opera. He retired from the Met in 2006.
Born in Algiers, Giuliani was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Oxford University.
● SOURCE Reuters
Obituary: Rob Batsford
Thursday 11 June 2009
Rob Batsford, former correspondent in Africa and sports desk stalwart, died on Thursday, two months after being diagnosed with brain tumours. His two sons were with him at a hospice in his native Warwickshire when he died. He was believed to be 67.
Batsford was hired by Reuters in Johannesburg in 1976 and began working for the sports desk in the late 1980s. His great loves were cricket and rugby union and he also covered several summer Olympics.
His friends and family will miss him hugely, friend and colleague Paul Smurthwaite said.
The funeral is at Sutton Coldfield Crematorium at 1:00 pm on Monday 22 June. Mourners are welcome to join the family for drinks and snacks at a nearby hotel after the cremation.
A wake will be held at The Calthorpe Arms (upstairs bar), Gray's Inn Road, London on 9 July at 2:00 pm.
Batsford was hired by Reuters in Johannesburg in 1976 and began working for the sports desk in the late 1980s. His great loves were cricket and rugby union and he also covered several summer Olympics.
His friends and family will miss him hugely, friend and colleague Paul Smurthwaite said.
The funeral is at Sutton Coldfield Crematorium at 1:00 pm on Monday 22 June. Mourners are welcome to join the family for drinks and snacks at a nearby hotel after the cremation.
A wake will be held at The Calthorpe Arms (upstairs bar), Gray's Inn Road, London on 9 July at 2:00 pm.
Obituary: Jack Henry
Friday 08 May 2009
Jack Henry, former editor of Reuters World Service, died on Wednesday at the age of 92.
He was closely involved in the introduction in July 1968 of a message storing and switching system that changed Reuters editorial operations as well as the landscape at 85 Fleet Street.
Reuters pioneered the use of the Automatic Data Exchange and systems like it which enabled the editing of English-language regional services from one central position, the World Desk, rather than from numerous regional desks. ADX meant that most of those desks could be eliminated, leaving only the French and Western Hemisphere Desks in London alongside a more powerful World Desk.
Born in London in January 1917, Henry J. Henry worked for British United Press from 1937 to 1940 when he joined the British Army. He served with the Royal Artillery, reaching the rank of Captain. At the end of World War Two he was in Berlin with some of the first British occupation troops.
Henry joined Reuters in November 1946, working on the Central Desk. From September 1949 he worked in Germany for nearly five years as correspondent and news editor. On special assignment from Germany, he took charge of coverage of the Council of Europe in 1951 and the Communist World Peace Conference in Vienna in 1952.
Returning to London in 1954, he worked on the Central Desk as copytaster, filing editor and editor-in-charge. He was appointed home editor in 1965, associate editor in 1970, manager, RWS in 1974, and editor, RWS in 1977.
After 33 years’ service he retired early at the end of 1979 when RWS was merged with Reuters Economic Services. Post-retirement, Henry worked as an editorial consultant on the Reuters Chronology, summaries of Reuters’ historical connections with various countries and regions, and other editorial projects.
A notice in The Times on Thursday said he died peacefully at Princess Grace Hospital, London. The funeral is at Golders Green on Sunday.
Postscript: Michael Nelson writes: Manfred Pagel and I attended Jack Henry’s funeral held on Sunday at Golders Green Crematorium. It was conducted without a rabbi and Andrew, the younger son, read the Kaddish. The three children – Judy and Ian as well as Andrew – gave moving tributes and two grandchildren read poems.
He was closely involved in the introduction in July 1968 of a message storing and switching system that changed Reuters editorial operations as well as the landscape at 85 Fleet Street.
Reuters pioneered the use of the Automatic Data Exchange and systems like it which enabled the editing of English-language regional services from one central position, the World Desk, rather than from numerous regional desks. ADX meant that most of those desks could be eliminated, leaving only the French and Western Hemisphere Desks in London alongside a more powerful World Desk.
Born in London in January 1917, Henry J. Henry worked for British United Press from 1937 to 1940 when he joined the British Army. He served with the Royal Artillery, reaching the rank of Captain. At the end of World War Two he was in Berlin with some of the first British occupation troops.
Henry joined Reuters in November 1946, working on the Central Desk. From September 1949 he worked in Germany for nearly five years as correspondent and news editor. On special assignment from Germany, he took charge of coverage of the Council of Europe in 1951 and the Communist World Peace Conference in Vienna in 1952.
Returning to London in 1954, he worked on the Central Desk as copytaster, filing editor and editor-in-charge. He was appointed home editor in 1965, associate editor in 1970, manager, RWS in 1974, and editor, RWS in 1977.
After 33 years’ service he retired early at the end of 1979 when RWS was merged with Reuters Economic Services. Post-retirement, Henry worked as an editorial consultant on the Reuters Chronology, summaries of Reuters’ historical connections with various countries and regions, and other editorial projects.
A notice in The Times on Thursday said he died peacefully at Princess Grace Hospital, London. The funeral is at Golders Green on Sunday.
Postscript: Michael Nelson writes: Manfred Pagel and I attended Jack Henry’s funeral held on Sunday at Golders Green Crematorium. It was conducted without a rabbi and Andrew, the younger son, read the Kaddish. The three children – Judy and Ian as well as Andrew – gave moving tributes and two grandchildren read poems.
Memories of Arthur Spiegelman, his humility and his humour
Wednesday 29 April 2009
Adam Spiegelman, Charlotte Spiegelman, Belinda Goldsmith, Andrew Nibley.
Arthur Spiegelman's family, friends and colleagues, past and present, gathered at the Tillman Chapel, the Church of the United Nations, in New York on 20 April to celebrate the life of one of Reuters' finest writers.
Spiegelman died last December aged 68 after a long and courageous battle with cancer. About 100 people attended the memorial service including his wife Charlotte, their younger son Adam, Reuters global managing editor Betty Wong, general news editor Howard Goller, and current and former Reuters journalists from New York and Washington, many of whom he mentored over the years.
Several of Charlotte and Arthur's former neighbours came to the event from Montclair, New Jersey, where they had lived and where Charlotte was jokingly known as "the Mayor of Montclair”.
Paul Holmes, Reuters former editor, political and general news, was the emcee for the service. Arthur's love of his family, of words, and of jazz, were recurring themes as friends and colleagues shared their memories – and many funny stories – of a man who never lost his humility or his humour, even in his final days.
Praise flowed for Arthur's sparkling leads, his intellect, and his insight. Former colleagues Michael Arkus and Andrew Nibley affectionately recalled Arthur's sharp wit, his infectious giggle, his chaotic desk, and his constant fear that he was one day away from being fired, despite working for Reuters for 42 years in London, New York and, for the past 12 years, in Los Angeles where he was West Coast bureau chief and chief entertainment correspondent.
Evelyn Leopold, whose friendship with Arthur pre-dated his time at Reuters to their years at The Record in Hackensack, New Jersey, read a letter from his friend, the Canadian poet Barry McKinnon, about their bonding over jazz. Dr Shelly Recinello, a family family and a psychologist, called Arthur "one of my favourite unofficial case studies." Arthur’s son Adam recalled how his father had always insisted that you put other people first (because more of them will show up at your funeral) – and how his sense of humour filtered down to his sons, both of whom are in comedy entertainment. Jazz saxophonist Kenny Brooks and singer Joy d'Angelo closed the service with Amazing Grace. Charlotte told the gathering she has chosen the song because Arthur had woven the lyrics by John Newton into a short story he had written last year. For how had Arthur spent his time while sick? He had decided to learn to write and attended a creative writing course. He was, as Charlotte recalled, a star student. “When I finished reading my story, the whole class applauded and then sang ‘Amazing Grace',” she quoted him as saying.
Paul Holmes: “I’m told that when Art lived in London in the sixties, he would smoke, ahem, ‘herbal’ cigarettes. Can you imagine that giggle of his after a puff or two?… There have been some great jokes here tonight, and Arthur must be up there laughing with us.”
Belinda Goldsmith: "Few deskers could resist a Spiegelman lead, even if he did break all the Reuters rules about sourcing and the day of the week in the lead. Farewell King Lear, Hello Hobbits. An actor's life can take strange turns, read his introduction to an interview with British actor Ian McKellen...One of his personal favourites was about comedian Don Rickles: There's a secret to the success of 81-year-old insult comedian and beloved American institution Don Rickles – he cannot tell a joke.
Michael Arkus: On paranoia. “He had a sort of gloomy look – halfway between gloom and a boy caught with his hand in a cookie jar. He said, ‘They are going to fire us.’ And he went on day after day, year after year.… As far as I am concerned he is still here…I can still hear him, his kooky laugh.”
Adam Spiegelman: “If you can’t spell a word, find another word,” he quoted Arthur as saying. His Dad told him he had to be good to other people. “It didn’t make any sense,” Arthur opined, “for someone to have the last bagel with onions.”
Andrew Nibley: “Many people change personalities, become political. But Arthur was always Arthur. He always listened to everything you said and he always came up with something wonderful. And he never really expected anything in return.”
Belinda Goldsmith
Funeral of Patrick Massey
Monday 06 April 2009
Strains of “The Mountains of Mourne”, the 19th century song which was a favourite of the late Patrick Massey, rang out at his funeral on Monday.
Among more than 80 mourners at Beckenham Crematorium in Kent were 23 colleagues of Massey’s during his hey-day as a top editorial operator – correspondent, bureau chief and editor.
Eulogies were delivered by Barry May and by David Lennon, formerly of the Financial Times, who knew Massey from the days when he was bureau chief in Israel.
Massey died in hospital on 17 March, two days after his 81st birthday.
He was mourned by his widow, Helen, son Bryan, daughter Shauna and other family members, as well as Allan Barker, John Bartram, Nick Carter, Sandy Critchley, François Duriaud, Geoff Flynn, John Freeman, Peter Gregson, Mike Hughes, Paul Iredale, Colin McIntyre, Nick Moore, Dave Nicholson, Ibrahim Noori, Rick Norsworthy, Rodney Pinder, Gerry Ratzin, John Rogers, Bill Saltmarsh, Peter Seymour, Paul Smurthwaite and Tony Winning.
● Obituary
● Tributes
Among more than 80 mourners at Beckenham Crematorium in Kent were 23 colleagues of Massey’s during his hey-day as a top editorial operator – correspondent, bureau chief and editor.
Eulogies were delivered by Barry May and by David Lennon, formerly of the Financial Times, who knew Massey from the days when he was bureau chief in Israel.
Massey died in hospital on 17 March, two days after his 81st birthday.
He was mourned by his widow, Helen, son Bryan, daughter Shauna and other family members, as well as Allan Barker, John Bartram, Nick Carter, Sandy Critchley, François Duriaud, Geoff Flynn, John Freeman, Peter Gregson, Mike Hughes, Paul Iredale, Colin McIntyre, Nick Moore, Dave Nicholson, Ibrahim Noori, Rick Norsworthy, Rodney Pinder, Gerry Ratzin, John Rogers, Bill Saltmarsh, Peter Seymour, Paul Smurthwaite and Tony Winning.
● Obituary
● Tributes
Obituary: Patrick Massey
Tuesday 17 March 2009
A nonchalant Patrick Massey (left) with a more circumspect Cy Fox, accompanying a British Army patrol in
Northern Ireland around 1972-1973. Rick Norsworthy, out of shot with the photographer, was also there.
Patrick Massey, one of the most seasoned correspondents of his era, died in hospital on Tuesday, two days after his 81st birthday.
An ace reporter and a masterly writer, Massey covered some of the momentous events of the post World War II years, first for The Associated Press and then Reuters, starting with the Congo crisis in the 1960s.
He was a star London-based fireman, always on call to fly out to world troublespots whenever a sure hand was needed. He revelled in the description – as did his ex-AP colleague Granville (Bob) Watts – and was never known to turn down such an assignment.
He reported the 1967 and 1973 Middle East wars, the Greek military coup, troubles in Cyprus and the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. Later he was bureau chief in Tel Aviv and Cairo in turn. Following his double duty in the Middle East Massey was Chief Correspondent in Tokyo from 1983 to 1986 before returning to the World Desk in London.
Throughout his fireman stints he never seemed particularly worried about the dangers he faced as long as he was part of the international press corps, had access to the action, communications and a few beers at the end of the day.
If you wanted to know what it was really like to be there, Massey was your man. The approach of the Massey lope and half smile was welcomed in many a hard-pressed bureau: reinforcements had arrived and head office had sent the best.
Massey began his half century-plus in news in Fleet Street, as a 16-year-old Daily Sketch copy boy. After army service and a spell as a caption writer at Kemsley Newspapers (later acquired by Thomson, now Thomson Reuters), he moved to the AP in 1953, again writing captions. Six months later he was on the British desk before becoming a correspondent and covering a wide range of assignments from the Congo to Paris, Geneva, Brussels, Cyprus and Libya.
In 1965 Massey and others among the AP’s British stalwarts in London including Ron Sly, George Short and Ron Thomson concluded they would always lack the status and financial rewards of their U.S.-based brethren assigned to the UK. Many of them agreed to move from Farringdon Road around the corner to 85 Fleet Street, followed in succeeding years by waves of others.
Massey and Thomson were close friends from boyhood in south-east London. As teenagers they were fire wardens during the blitz and told great tales of spotting the blazes from the roof of either, depending on the telling, St Bride’s Church or the adjacent Reuters building. To hear them recount it, they saw the flames leaping around St Paul’s Cathedral. The dramatic detail may have been apocryphal, but they spun rattling good yarns.
At the time many of the AP’s Brits crossed over, Reuters was setting up the World Desk to replace the old Central Desk and North American editorial ideas were sought after. It turned out to be a good deal for the Baron.
Massey made the London Bureau his base of operations and his bright writing touch soon lit up the file. One of the stories he loved covering in the 1970s was the disappearance of Lord Lucan after the murder of his children's nanny.
He was always a keen aviation writer and made sure he was in at the beginning of the Concorde story, getting a press seat on the supersonic airliner’s inaugural flight and most significant flights thereafter. His last story for Reuters appeared on the file more than a decade after his retirement – a personal piece following a Concorde crash on take-off from Charles de Gaulle airport in July 2000 (reproduced below).
Massey had retired early in February 1989 as International Quality Editor (General News), responsible for shaping the file and providing detailed daily feedback to correspondents including how they fared against the competition.
Throughout the three years of that head office desk job he yearned to return the thick of the action.
Even in retirement his byline couldn’t be kept off the file. In 1994, five years after leaving the payroll, Massey was back. He returned to Belfast for the first time in 18 years and loved every minute of it. One memorable byliner under the headline “From bartender to British bogeyman in 25 years of troubles” began thus:
BELFAST, Aug 12 (Reuter) - The young bartender poured me a pint of Guinness and offered his opinion on the rioting that had ripped Belfast apart the night before.
"Four dead," he observed. "You know if it had been 200 dead they might all have kept quiet for another 10 years."
That was in July, 1970, a time widely regarded as pivotal in the 25 years of the Northern Ireland struggles. Since then the conflict has killed about 3,500 people.
The bartender, named Gerry Adams, was soon to leave his job at the Duke of York pub in central Belfast. It was not for another year or so that police named him as a leader of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) …
After some happy years in retirement in Orpington, Kent, Massey suffered a severe stroke five years ago but was able to attend a few pensioners' lunches and other events though confined to a wheelchair, with Helen – always the perfect go-anywhere foreign correspondent's partner – at his side.
After 35 years as a wire agency journalist, he took up freelance travel writing, sometimes job-sharing with Helen.
The cause of death was pneumonia and congestive heart failure.
Everyone who knew Massey had a favourite tale to tell. A selection:
Ron Sly: I have a very clear recollection of first meeting Pat when I joined AP. The thrusting gait, the gleam in the eye, the half smile and, of course, the vitality made a big impression on me. Characteristically, he was about to dash off to Paris to quell a riot or something. He had a flair for bringing stories to life, however routine, in my opinion and I learnt a great deal from him, especially when news editing in London Bureau.
On a more personal note, we enjoyed Pat and Helen's hospitality when they were based in Tel Aviv and during the visit Morag and I took off for a few days around Aqaba. We were out of contact for this time but when we landed back in Tel Aviv Pat was waiting for us. He had been following our tracks since we left, just an example of his thoroughness.
Pat played a big part in my move from AP to Reuters and I never regretted it. He, along with Ron Thomson, George Short, Wag (Richard Wagstaff), and others no longer with us were great company and, for a copytaster, a pleasure to see on the old skeds. One 'phone call and they could be back on the desk in no time.
Cy Fox: I first got to know Pat when, as a Canadian Press correspondent, I was periodically covering the murder and mayhem gathering pace in Northern Ireland around 1970. Pat, who I think had already come through Black September in Jordan, would lope around the perilous streets of West Belfast and the Derry Bogside with all the justified bravado of a crack Reuter fireman.
One Saturday morning he took me, a greenhorn, along on a mission to cover a secret IRA press conference at the notorious Divis Flats in Belfast. On entering and leaving the place we had to brave stairways lined with massed, pistol-brandishing boyos. Inside the Flats he and I joined a TV crew from the Irish Republic to view a young British army cadet who had been captured by the gunmen.
Irish television broadcast the proceedings that night, and the next day at the officers’ mess of the Green Jackets Regiment we were verbally assailed by the British brass, who had spotted Messrs Massey and Fox on hand for the televised prisoner display. The Brits threatened to cancel our scheduled presence that day on an army Land Rover patrol of central Belfast. But Pat, oblivious to army displeasure and also brazenly asserting the rights of a free press, stared and argued them down – right there in their own mess – and off we duly went on the patrol. There was no stopping Massey!
Allan Barker: He had a distinctive writing style that got to the heart of the story very quickly and was noted for its short lead paras. He was never a formula agency writer. Sub-editors soon learned that it was not wise to tamper with the Massey style. A few who were unwise enough to do so usually found an angry Pat loping across the 4th floor at 85 Fleet Street to their desk ready for a testy exchange.
When I had the privilege of working with Pat and George Short in the bureau from 1974 to 1976, we covered unprecedented Irish violence including the notorious Birmingham and Guildford pub bombings as well as a fragile political situation in which Harold Wilson and Ted Heath vied for supremacy. Heath lost an election he called in 1974 after declaring a three-day work-week due to an unrelenting miners' strike and then Wilson suddenly quit in 1976. The British economy, then as now, was under considerable strain.
Pat usually waded through masses of copy from the Press Association to hone his version of the top UK stories, as long as it was tacitly agreed he was not to be called into action between the hours of 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm. He was one of a bevy of Fleet Streeters at that time that liked to have a lunchtime noggin or two. It never seemed to affect his work after his return to the bureau and fitted in well with Parliament's then mid-afternoon statements and PM's Questions.
Barry May: One of Pat’s fireman stints was the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war. He turned up in Rawalpindi to reinforce the one-man bureau (me) with a Beretta he had acquired for personal protection on the trek through the perilous wilds of the North West Frontier, then as now a lawless badland hazardous to outsiders.
The pistol looked and felt real enough and was stamped “Made in Italy”. But it was fabricated by one of the back street gunsmiths in the frontier village of Dara Adam Khel who forged weaponry ranging from Lugers and other assorted handguns to Kalashnikovs, Lee Enfield rifles and RPGs. They were clever copies and certainly cheap but they were notoriously unreliable – as likely to jam or blow up in the hands of anyone who fired them as to cause harm from the business end of the barrel.
Pat knew he would never get out with his souvenir in his baggage when he returned to London so he left it with me as the resident correspondent. Wishing to keep all my fingers intact for typing, I never dared discharge the damned thing and eventually handed it over to my successor as an unauthorised item of bureau kit.
Brian Creighton: I worked with Pat Massey in the London Bureau from 1971 to 1973. If ever the word “genius” applied to a Reuter journalist, it applied to Pat. He had an uncanny knack of bending the traditional Reuters writing style without ever breaking it, and the results were always exceptional. I was constantly amazed at the talent of the man.
Nick Carter: In the last few weeks before the fall of Saigon in 1975, Pat agreed to go in as the bureau's last fireman, though the briefing on the local situation, which I gave him at Singapore Airport on his last lap, left him seething. Everything was hand to mouth, and the foreign currency he took in with him was very informally transferred from funds brought out of Saigon only hours before by Colin McIntyre. Saigon was on its last legs. Bernard Edinger, who had a French passport, was flown in specially to hole up in the French Embassy ready for when our bureau was evacuated. Pat, Jeremy Toye, David Laulicht and Pham Ngoc Dinh kept a graphic file going through the last days till on April 29th their quarterspeed wire finally spelt out the word "scramble". Pat, Jeremy and David reached the American Embassy roof and boarded the helicopters to the US Navy ship Mobile. Edinger got out the following month, but Dinh was stuck for the next five years.
David Nicholson: I'm pretty sure that Israel was his favourite posting and he often spoke fondly of his time there and the friendships he had formed. He once told me about answering a phone in the bureau one day and hearing the caller say: “Mr Massey, this is Menachem Begin. I have a correction for your readers. I gave you some wrong information in our interview yesterday and I want to correct that...”
Rodney Pinder: I’ll never forget that “heather-louping” stride of Pat's as he swept into the story or the newsroom, full of energy and get-going. He was a first class reporter and writer, thoroughly professional.
On the lighter side, literally, he was the champion lamp post climber at the annual Ron Thomson Christmas party in Orleans Road, Crystal Palace.
As the evening progressed, and the libations took hold, a small group of the more daring, or daft, would go out into the street to see which of us could climb the fastest to the top of the lamp post opposite. Pat was champ. I don't think Ron ever made it to the top.
Patricia Betts: I fondly remember Pat arriving at many Reuter parties over the years with his flashing multi-coloured headband and his broad smile. At some stage during the evening he would entertain us by singing his special rendition of “The Mountains of Mourne” and encouraging us to join in the chorus!
● Click to read more tributes on the Letters page.
Patrick Massey in 1987, two years before he
took early retirement.
The funeral will be on Monday 6 April at 12:00 noon at Beckenham Crematorium, Elmers End Road, Beckenham, Kent BR3 4TD, followed by a reception at Dulwich and Sydenham Golf Club, Grange Lane, College Road, London SE21 7LH.
Patrick Massey’s last story on Reuters’ news file in 2000:
First reporter on Concorde recalls serene flight
By Patrick Massey
LONDON, July 26 (Reuters) - As the first reporter to fly on Concorde, I was slightly disappointed by its serene transition across the sound barrier.
Brought up on movies in which pilots battled fearsome judder to enter supersonic flight, I was expecting something of that sort aboard Prototype 002 as it flew from Fairford in England to Toulouse in France in May 1971.
But the voice in my headphone droned on laconically: "Mach 0.8...Mach 0.9...Mach 1...Mach 1.1." That was it. We were supersonic. No battle.
Casting aside a tentative judder story on my typewriter, I wrote instead: "Flying through the sound barrier on Concorde is like crossing the equator: you don't know it's happening unless somebody tells you."
On subsequent flights, I did notice the push in your back that accompanies the engagement of afterburners to propel the aircraft through Mach 1. But that day I had been looking for something more dramatic.
Most of the cabin on that flight was occupied by Dalek-type machines monitoring the intricacies of Concorde's performance.
There were only two other passengers, a BBC cameraman and the managing director of British Aircraft Corporation.
We knew that 55,000 feet below us, Atlantic waters were being buffeted by our mighty sonic boom.
But in the cabin, we felt only the normal hum of aircraft noise and a feeling of great pride at taking part in this magic moment.
How did I manage to be there? British Aircraft Corporation had learned that its French counterpart, Aerospatiale, intended to carry a reporter that day on a Concorde flight with President Georges Pompidou. The British company decided to do the same.
And with room for only one reporter, they chose Reuters.
I flew three more times on Concorde - a proving flight with passengers to Tehran and flights inaugurating services to Bahrain and Washington.
All were memorable experiences, but none could match the exhilaration of the time when we pioneered that path through the sound barrier.
I boarded Prototype 002 again only last year. By then it was in an aviation museum at Yeovil in southwestern England, forever safe from the kind of tragedy that struck on Tuesday at Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Funeral of Chris Catlin
Thursday 26 February 2009
Around 400 people turned out for Chris Catlin’s funeral at Stamford, Lincolnshire, on Tuesday including a sprinkling of old Reuters friends, Peter Mosley writes.
Chums I spotted at the church included Jim Anderson, Krishna Biltoo, Bill Creighton, who had flown in specially from Virginia, Paul Iredale, Tom Kirkup, Richard Pascoe and Jeremy Toye.
David Rogers delivered the eulogy.
The crowd of mourners reflected the range of Chris's career (Reuters 1969 to 1994) as well as his local commitments including Stamford School governor.
Chris was a fine reporter and linguist who switched to sales and admin, then quit and discovered he had a good a talent as a journalism trainer (I can certainly vouch for that) first with the Reuters Foundation and then more lucratively on his own account, gave that up to become features editor of a leading shooting magazine (shooting was his passion), wrote a novel, Brudersuche, which was published in Germany and finally launched himself as a book editor and publisher in his own right.
His third cook book was on the stocks when he died of a heart attack on 12 February at the age of 62.
He left a wife, Shirley, son Alex and daughter Jenny and will be missed by an awful lot of people.
Chums I spotted at the church included Jim Anderson, Krishna Biltoo, Bill Creighton, who had flown in specially from Virginia, Paul Iredale, Tom Kirkup, Richard Pascoe and Jeremy Toye.
David Rogers delivered the eulogy.
The crowd of mourners reflected the range of Chris's career (Reuters 1969 to 1994) as well as his local commitments including Stamford School governor.
Chris was a fine reporter and linguist who switched to sales and admin, then quit and discovered he had a good a talent as a journalism trainer (I can certainly vouch for that) first with the Reuters Foundation and then more lucratively on his own account, gave that up to become features editor of a leading shooting magazine (shooting was his passion), wrote a novel, Brudersuche, which was published in Germany and finally launched himself as a book editor and publisher in his own right.
His third cook book was on the stocks when he died of a heart attack on 12 February at the age of 62.
He left a wife, Shirley, son Alex and daughter Jenny and will be missed by an awful lot of people.
Arthur Spiegelman memorial set for 20 April
Thursday 19 February 2009
A memorial service for Arthur Spiegelman, who died in December, is to be held in New York in April.
Spiegelman, global entertainment editor, succumbed to cancer at his home in Los Angeles on Saturday 20 December. He was 68 and had been with Reuters for 42 years.
The memorial will be on Monday 20 April at 6:00 pm at the Tillman Chapel, Church of the United Nations, First Avenue and 44th Street, New York.
“Following the service there will be an opportunity to continue celebrating Arthur's life at a nearby restaurant to be announced shortly,” said Evelyn Leopold, a colleague during Spiegelman’s lifetime in journalism. “Please RSVP to ● evleopold@gmail.com.”
● CLICK to read the obituary.
● CLICK to read tributes on the Mail page.
Spiegelman, global entertainment editor, succumbed to cancer at his home in Los Angeles on Saturday 20 December. He was 68 and had been with Reuters for 42 years.
The memorial will be on Monday 20 April at 6:00 pm at the Tillman Chapel, Church of the United Nations, First Avenue and 44th Street, New York.
“Following the service there will be an opportunity to continue celebrating Arthur's life at a nearby restaurant to be announced shortly,” said Evelyn Leopold, a colleague during Spiegelman’s lifetime in journalism. “Please RSVP to ● evleopold@gmail.com.”
● CLICK to read the obituary.
● CLICK to read tributes on the Mail page.
Obituary: Chris Catlin
Thursday 12 February 2009
Chris Catlin, former correspondent and manager, died suddenly on Thursday near his home in Lincolnshire, England. He was working on his latest cook book with colleagues when he collapsed from what appears to have been a heart attack. He was 62 and had been in robust spirits.
"He was an exceptional, once-met-never-forgotten character who is going to leave a hole in our lives," said David Rogers, a former colleague.
Catlin joined Reuters in 1969. After excelling as a correspondent in Moscow and Bonn he switched to a career in management. His first two managerial posts were in the challenging areas of Israel and South Africa.
“In both places, supported by his wife, Shirley, he made a significant contribution to the growth of our business,” said Peter Holland, whose area management role included both countries. “He will be greatly missed.”
Subsequently he was appointed country manager in Germany, based in Frankfurt, and then in China.
Michael Reupke, former editor-in-chief, described Catlin "as one of the most successful managers in the tradition of distinguished correspondents who became distinguished national managers. I know he had the rare quality of being an excellent salesman with a keen understanding of markets which helped produce spectacular results first in Germany, then in China."
Catlin left the company in 1994. In recent years he produced three books: Brudersuche (2004), published in English as Fallen Brothers; Game for Gourmets (2007), a countryman's cookbook; and The Game Book (2007), a shooting anthology.
The funeral service has been set for 3:00 pm on Tuesday 24 February at St Martins, Stamford, Lincolnshire to be followed by a reception/wake nearby.
The church is opposite The George, the town's best-known hotel and a local landmark, and not far off the A1.
“Chris had one stipulation: no black ties!” David Rogers said. “Shirley and the children, Alex and Jenny, hope to see as many old friends and colleagues as can make it.”
"He was an exceptional, once-met-never-forgotten character who is going to leave a hole in our lives," said David Rogers, a former colleague.
Catlin joined Reuters in 1969. After excelling as a correspondent in Moscow and Bonn he switched to a career in management. His first two managerial posts were in the challenging areas of Israel and South Africa.
“In both places, supported by his wife, Shirley, he made a significant contribution to the growth of our business,” said Peter Holland, whose area management role included both countries. “He will be greatly missed.”
Subsequently he was appointed country manager in Germany, based in Frankfurt, and then in China.
Michael Reupke, former editor-in-chief, described Catlin "as one of the most successful managers in the tradition of distinguished correspondents who became distinguished national managers. I know he had the rare quality of being an excellent salesman with a keen understanding of markets which helped produce spectacular results first in Germany, then in China."
Catlin left the company in 1994. In recent years he produced three books: Brudersuche (2004), published in English as Fallen Brothers; Game for Gourmets (2007), a countryman's cookbook; and The Game Book (2007), a shooting anthology.
The funeral service has been set for 3:00 pm on Tuesday 24 February at St Martins, Stamford, Lincolnshire to be followed by a reception/wake nearby.
The church is opposite The George, the town's best-known hotel and a local landmark, and not far off the A1.
“Chris had one stipulation: no black ties!” David Rogers said. “Shirley and the children, Alex and Jenny, hope to see as many old friends and colleagues as can make it.”
Obituary: Baroness de Reuter
Sunday 25 January 2009
Marguerite, Baroness de Reuter, the last of the Reuters, died on Sunday aged 96. The Reuter Barony is now extinct.
She was the widow of Oliver George Paul Louis Gordon, 4th Baron de Reuter (1894-1968), whose grandfather Paul Julius Reuter established his news service in London in 1851. They married on 4 December 1937.
The Barony was granted by Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, brother of Queen Victoria's Consort Prince Albert, in 1871. Queen Victoria formally recognised the German title as carrying the privileges of the foreign nobility in England in 1891. Reuters' founder was born in Germany in 1816 and became a naturalised British subject in 1857.
As the title passes down the male line exclusively and as all three grandsons of Paul Julius de Reuter were childless, it becomes extinct on the death of the Baroness.
"The name dies with her," said her friend Michael Nelson, former general manager.
Another close friend, John Fox, said the baroness had suffered successive strokes late last year. She died in a French old people's home on the border with Monaco.
He said Swiss-born Marguerite, a widow for more than 40 years, was intensely proud of the family link with Reuters, and of the British nationality she acquired through her husband.
The Reuter family's direct connection with the company ended on 18 April 1915 when the founder's son, Baron Herbert de Reuter, 63, shot himself three days after the sudden death of his wife. Hubert de Reuter, his only son, thus became the 3rd Baron. He served as a private in the Black Watch regiment of the British Army and was killed by machine-gun fire whilst carrying wounded men during the Battle of the Somme on 13 November 1916, five days before the end of that battle.
His cousin Oliver then became the 4th Baron.
Last year Reuters, which had already moved out of 85 Fleet Street, its headquarters since 1939, was taken over by Thomson, the Canadian media group.
Thomson Reuters’ chief executive Tom Glocer said he was saddened to hear of the baroness's death. He added:
"Although the founding family of Reuters were no longer significant shareholders in the company, the baroness did notably attend a service at St Bride's Church, London, to mark Reuters' historic move from Fleet Street to Canary Wharf in 2005."
The baroness was special guest at the Farewell to Fleet Street service.
Marguerite was born on 14 July 1912, the daughter of George Uehlinger of Neunkirch, Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Friends remembered her as a generous woman who spoke numerous languages, loved bridge, opera and ballet, and enjoyed skiing until well into her 70s.
Known to her English friends as Daisy, she long divided her time between Monte Carlo and Lausanne.
"She was a very warm-hearted, hospitable person – generous, philanthropic, a great supporter of the arts and music. She was always immaculately turned out: elegant, refined and beautiful, with the most angelic smile," Fox said.
He said Marguerite would be cremated in Lausanne and her ashes interred there with the remains of her husband.
Postscript: The funeral and cremation of Baroness de Reuter was at the Monaco Athenae on Thursday 29 January.
The service was attended by the nephew of the Baroness, Paul Dunner, and about a dozen friends, mostly from Saint Paul’s Anglican Church whose American rector Fr Walter Raymond conducted the service.
Nelson gave the address.
A wreath from the company carried a “Thomson Reuters” banner. It marked the end of an era.
● SOURCE Reuters
Obituary: Mary Powers
Thursday 15 January 2009
Mary Powers, 54, former correspondent in Lima and desk editor in New York, died at home in Boston, Massachusetts on 9 January after a long illness.
Her career in Latin America included reporting, editing and bureau chief assignments in Lima, Mexico City and San Juan as well as Washington and New York. Besides Reuters, she also worked for The Associated Press and Bridge news services and contributed articles to many major magazines, newspapers and wire service publications.
For the last two decades Powers made Lima her second home, where she was president of the Foreign Press Association and where she shared her love of Peru with visitors.
A memorial service will be held at St Cecilia’s Church, 42 Main St. in Wilbraham, Massachusetts on 31 January at 11:00 am. In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Mary Bernadette Powers may be made to Children’s Hospital Boston, One Autumn St. #731, Boston, MA 02215 or at ● www.chtrust.org.
Obituary: John Rettie
Wednesday 14 January 2009
John Rettie, the Reuters correspondent who broke the news of Nikita Khrushchev's world-shaking secret speech denouncing Josef Stalin in 1956, has died at the age of 82.
The speech to the Soviet Communist Party's 20th congress detailing the dictator's crimes as a tyrant, murderer and torturer of party members was smuggled out of Moscow and published in the West.
Fifty years later Rettie recalled that its consequences, not fully foreseen by Khrushchev, shook the Soviet Union to the core, but even more so its communist allies, notably in central Europe. Forces were unleashed that eventually changed the course of history.
Stalin had died only three years previously and was still mourned by most people in the Soviet Union. Much later, Soviet sources said some were so convulsed as they listened that they suffered heart attacks; others committed suicide afterwards.
In the days after the congress diplomats of central European communist states began to whisper that Khrushchev had denounced Stalin at a secret session.
"No details were forthcoming. I was working as the second Reuters correspondent in Moscow to Sidney Weiland, who – more for form's sake than anything – tried to cable a brief report of this bald fact to London. As expected, the censors suppressed it."
Then, the evening before Rettie was due to go on holiday to Stockholm, a Russian informant who he suspected was a KGB agent told him (over a gramophone record played loudly to confuse microphones assumed to be in the walls of his flat) of Khrushchev's indictment.
The informant had no notes, far less a text of the speech. "He told me that the party throughout the Soviet Union heard of it at special meetings of members in factories, farms, offices and universities, when it was read to them once, but only once. At such meetings in Georgia, where Stalin was born, members were outraged at the denigration by a Russian of their own national hero. Some people were killed in the ensuing riots and trains arrived in Moscow from Tbilisi with their windows smashed.
"My problem was: could I believe him? It is easy now, with hindsight, to realise that of course what he told me must have been true. But it was a colossal risk to believe such a tale from a single and somewhat dubious source, with little corroborating evidence, and to stake the authority of Reuters on it. I had only a few hours to make up my mind before flying to Stockholm. That raised another problem. In the 1930s many foreign correspondents had found censorship so restrictive that they often flew to the capital of then independent Latvia, Riga, to file their stories before returning to Moscow. Surprisingly, the Soviet government did not object. But after two decades of Stalinism no western correspondent dared to do the same in the 1950s. At the very least, expulsion would have resulted, if not worse.
"I didn't know what to do, so I called Weiland, my boss. It was nearly midnight, but we agreed to meet on the street outside the Central Telegraph office, where no hidden microphones could overhear us. It was a very cold winter, and we tramped through the snow as I recounted the tale, pausing from time to time under street lamps to consult my voluminous notes.”
In the end they decided to believe the informant, who had been reliable in the past. Besides that, a New York Times correspondent was also flying out the next day and they suspected he would immediately report on the rumours. “We would be beaten on a story of which we had an incomparably better – and exclusive – account. Unthinkable!”
The next day, feeling tense, Rettie flew with his wife to Stockholm, the fat notebook burning a hole in his pocket.
“We stayed in a hotel for the first night, much of which I spent typing out the two stories and dictating them by telephone to London. I had spoken earlier to the news editor and explained that under no circumstances should either story bear my name or even a Moscow dateline, and that the speech had to be based on ‘communist sources’ – no others were possible.
"When I was ready, Reuters called me back and put me through to ‘copy’ – the copytakers. I was extremely nervous and assumed a false American accent to disguise my identity. In vain. ‘Thank you, John,’ said the familiar voice when I finished my long dictation. When the Swedish papers appeared with Khrushchev's ‘Stalin Sensation’ splashed across the front pages, it was datelined Bonn, with the riots in Georgia sourced from Vienna.
"In the West, the impact of the speech received a colossal boost from the publication of the full, albeit sanitised, text in The Observer and The New York Times. This was the first time the full text had been available for public scrutiny anywhere in the world."
Later, after being subjected to KGB pressure, Rettie asked the British ambassador to send a message to Reuters seeking his recall.
Rettie subsequently worked for the BBC and also wrote for British newspapers. He returned to Moscow for The Guardian 32 years after his world-beating scoop and tried to find out who had authorised the leak of the speech to him. He concluded it must have been Khrushchev himself.
A fluent Spanish and Russian speaker, Rettie was known as a stickler for the correct use of English. He often used to rant about the wording of some BBC World Service news bulletin or other or else sputter over a mispronunciation of a name, usually Russian.
Rettie died of cancer in hospital on 10 January.
● SOURCE BBC | The Guardian | London Review of Books | New Statesman
The speech to the Soviet Communist Party's 20th congress detailing the dictator's crimes as a tyrant, murderer and torturer of party members was smuggled out of Moscow and published in the West.
Fifty years later Rettie recalled that its consequences, not fully foreseen by Khrushchev, shook the Soviet Union to the core, but even more so its communist allies, notably in central Europe. Forces were unleashed that eventually changed the course of history.
Stalin had died only three years previously and was still mourned by most people in the Soviet Union. Much later, Soviet sources said some were so convulsed as they listened that they suffered heart attacks; others committed suicide afterwards.
In the days after the congress diplomats of central European communist states began to whisper that Khrushchev had denounced Stalin at a secret session.
"No details were forthcoming. I was working as the second Reuters correspondent in Moscow to Sidney Weiland, who – more for form's sake than anything – tried to cable a brief report of this bald fact to London. As expected, the censors suppressed it."
Then, the evening before Rettie was due to go on holiday to Stockholm, a Russian informant who he suspected was a KGB agent told him (over a gramophone record played loudly to confuse microphones assumed to be in the walls of his flat) of Khrushchev's indictment.
The informant had no notes, far less a text of the speech. "He told me that the party throughout the Soviet Union heard of it at special meetings of members in factories, farms, offices and universities, when it was read to them once, but only once. At such meetings in Georgia, where Stalin was born, members were outraged at the denigration by a Russian of their own national hero. Some people were killed in the ensuing riots and trains arrived in Moscow from Tbilisi with their windows smashed.
"My problem was: could I believe him? It is easy now, with hindsight, to realise that of course what he told me must have been true. But it was a colossal risk to believe such a tale from a single and somewhat dubious source, with little corroborating evidence, and to stake the authority of Reuters on it. I had only a few hours to make up my mind before flying to Stockholm. That raised another problem. In the 1930s many foreign correspondents had found censorship so restrictive that they often flew to the capital of then independent Latvia, Riga, to file their stories before returning to Moscow. Surprisingly, the Soviet government did not object. But after two decades of Stalinism no western correspondent dared to do the same in the 1950s. At the very least, expulsion would have resulted, if not worse.
"I didn't know what to do, so I called Weiland, my boss. It was nearly midnight, but we agreed to meet on the street outside the Central Telegraph office, where no hidden microphones could overhear us. It was a very cold winter, and we tramped through the snow as I recounted the tale, pausing from time to time under street lamps to consult my voluminous notes.”
In the end they decided to believe the informant, who had been reliable in the past. Besides that, a New York Times correspondent was also flying out the next day and they suspected he would immediately report on the rumours. “We would be beaten on a story of which we had an incomparably better – and exclusive – account. Unthinkable!”
The next day, feeling tense, Rettie flew with his wife to Stockholm, the fat notebook burning a hole in his pocket.
“We stayed in a hotel for the first night, much of which I spent typing out the two stories and dictating them by telephone to London. I had spoken earlier to the news editor and explained that under no circumstances should either story bear my name or even a Moscow dateline, and that the speech had to be based on ‘communist sources’ – no others were possible.
"When I was ready, Reuters called me back and put me through to ‘copy’ – the copytakers. I was extremely nervous and assumed a false American accent to disguise my identity. In vain. ‘Thank you, John,’ said the familiar voice when I finished my long dictation. When the Swedish papers appeared with Khrushchev's ‘Stalin Sensation’ splashed across the front pages, it was datelined Bonn, with the riots in Georgia sourced from Vienna.
"In the West, the impact of the speech received a colossal boost from the publication of the full, albeit sanitised, text in The Observer and The New York Times. This was the first time the full text had been available for public scrutiny anywhere in the world."
Later, after being subjected to KGB pressure, Rettie asked the British ambassador to send a message to Reuters seeking his recall.
Rettie subsequently worked for the BBC and also wrote for British newspapers. He returned to Moscow for The Guardian 32 years after his world-beating scoop and tried to find out who had authorised the leak of the speech to him. He concluded it must have been Khrushchev himself.
A fluent Spanish and Russian speaker, Rettie was known as a stickler for the correct use of English. He often used to rant about the wording of some BBC World Service news bulletin or other or else sputter over a mispronunciation of a name, usually Russian.
Rettie died of cancer in hospital on 10 January.
● SOURCE BBC | The Guardian | London Review of Books | New Statesman
Obituary: Ralph Harris
Thursday 08 January 2009
Ralph Harris, who as Reuters’ White House correspondent covered eight US presidents from Truman to Reagan, has died at the age of 87.
The cause of death in a hospital outside Washington on 24 December was respiratory failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He also had emphysema.
Harris reported on the "frenzied" aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination amid shotgun-wielding Texas policemen in 10-gallon hats and filed details of Lee Harvey Oswald's own murder from a public telephone box while surrounded by an angry mob.
He was unflappable and invariably easy to deal with, provided he was shown the proper respect as the most senior reporter in Reuters' main reporting bureau. He was known for precise and clear-cut reports and was never reluctant to point out shortcomings. As Ronald Reagan’s press secretary Larry Speakes put it when announcing at a White House briefing on 25 March 1986 that Harris was retiring, he was a “reporter’s reporter” focusing on “accuracy and speed... facts without fluff”. Reagan wrote to Harris describing him as a “veritable institution among the Fourth Estate in Washington”.
Harris was immensely proud to be Reuters' chief White House correspondent and refused to take another job. Although well-qualified, he did not even want to be considered for bureau chief when that post became vacant.
But he could occasionally be cajoled to handle other major news events. In February 1976, with an announcement imminent on whether Concorde would be allowed to fly into the United States, Reuters was anxious to be first with the news, and Harris was suggested as the best person for the job. "No," he said, "I only cover the president!"
Colleagues appealed to his pride by noting he was the quickest reporter they had. "You really think so?" he asked, and, scouring official documents, he quickly found his story, leading with the supersonic aircraft's two-word landing authorisation: "Concorde OK".
In the early 1980s Reuters – conscious of the importance of branding – wanted Harris to ask questions at televised presidential news conferences. Harris initially shied away from the limelight but quickly relented when warned that another Reuters reporter at the news conferences would take his place. Thereafter, presidents were often quizzed as television screens flashed: "Ralph Harris, Reuters."
Born in Manchester, England, in 1921, he started his career with the Birkenhead News in Liverpool. After World War Two, during which he served with the Royal Air Force in South Africa, he travelled to the United States and joined Reuters in Washington in 1949. The bureau had a staff of five – four correspondents and a teleprinter operator.
Harris began covering news conferences towards the end of President Harry Truman's administration and remained through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, travelling all over the United States and the world as a member of the White House press corps.
For the better part of 37 years Harris made the White House beat his own. He established himself as one of Reuters’ quickest and most facile writers with his reports on presidential politics, crises and tragedy through the Korean War, the Cuban missile stand-off, the assassinations of President John Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, Vietnam, Watergate, Richard Nixon's downfall and the Iranian hostage crisis.
When President Kennedy was shot on 22 November 1963, Harris flew immediately to Dallas where Lee Harvey Oswald was already being grilled as the chief suspect.
He later described the “fantastic and fiction-like” atmosphere there.
“The most frenzied scene I have ever experienced greeted me on my arrival outside the Homicide Squad Room on the third floor of Police Headquarters. Oswald was being brought in and out for questioning by cigar-smoking detectives wearing ten-gallon hats. Witnesses were besieged and pinned against the wall for interviews before police, armed with revolvers and shotguns, rescued them and took them away.”
Harris established himself in a television transmitting-truck parked outside the building, “keeping one eye on the possibility of trouble from a large ill-tempered crowd outside and the other on the monitors in the truck”. He described his reaction upon seeing Oswald’s murder on screen.
“The fatal shot fired by Jack Ruby into Oswald’s abdomen at point-blank range in the presence of armed police and reporters had such a stunning impact that the scene froze into a moment of paralysed amazement. Then pandemonium as Oswald dropped to the concrete floor...
“I ran to a street telephone two blocks away, filed a snap to New York, dashed back to the TV truck, and then back to the phone to fill in some of the details... A crowd of about 200 people crowded around me to listen to what I had to say, and as I was talking to New York I could hear some of them shouting, ‘He should get a medal’ and ‘Let’s hope he shot him in the eye’ (this took place before Oswald died).
“I included these remarks in my story, and then turned around to find a small scowling group threatening to express displeasure with what I had filed. It often happens, particularly in the violence-ridden South, that people do not like to be quoted, even anonymously, when they give vent to their feelings. But I was not interfered with, and the next problem was to find transportation to get to the hospital where Oswald was dying.”
In 1979, Harris earned the singular distinction of becoming the first foreign-born journalist to be elected president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
At the association’s annual dinner, he described the traditional role of his office as “criticising the president's last 12 months and advising him on the next 12 months.
“As a foreigner, I thought it would be impertinent...,” he said, as the rest of the sentence was drowned out by loud, prolonged applause from President Jimmy Carter.
The next year, Carter did not attend the dinner. Harris suggested it was because “he was afraid I would introduce him as the 39th governor general of the Colonies”.
A long-time member of the National Press Club, in retirement he spent many hours there playing gin rummy tournaments.
Harris is survived by Ena, his wife of 64 years, daughter Fabia, son Stephen and four grandchildren. He lived in the Washington area for 60 years and became an American citizen in 1995.
Photo shows Harris (centre) at the time of his retirement in 1986 with four White House press secretaries and (far right) Washington bureau chief Bruce Russell. The press secretaries (left to right) are Jerald terHorst (Gerald Ford), Ronald Ziegler (Richard Nixon), James Brady (seated, Ronald Reagan), and Jody Powell (Jimmy Carter).
● SOURCE Washington Post
Obituary: Arthur Spiegelman
Saturday 20 December 2008
Arthur Spiegelman, global entertainment editor, died on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles aged 68. After a Reuters career of 42 years, he went on permanent medical leave only a few weeks ago and his health declined rapidly on Wednesday. He had suffered from cancer for several years.
Spiegelman's death occurred at around 7:00 pm (3:00 am Sunday GMT). His wife Charlotte, their sons Michael and Adam, younger brother Marvin and granddaughter Molly Mae were with him at the end.
Paul Holmes, former correspondent and editor, said: “I was privileged to speak to Art on the phone from New York just a few hours ago, though he could not respond. I told him how much he meant to so many people ... but I think he knew that.”
Spiegelman was one of Reuters’ finest writers and longest-serving correspondents whose graceful prose and unfailing sense of humour made him one of its most admired correspondents.
David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief, said: “Art’s writing was beloved of readers and editors alike, using a light touch to explore subjects from pop culture to politics and an ability to find a laugh or wry angle anywhere. He was a friend and mentor to legions of journalists.”
Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Spiegelman joined Reuters in London in 1966 from a New Jersey newspaper, the Bergen Evening Record. His stint on the Americas desk at 85 Fleet Street was supposed to last for six months but he stayed on and never bothered to inquire whether the job that was being held open for him at the newspaper in Hackensack was still open. In 1972, after a spell in London Bureau, he returned to the United States where he was a New York shift editor and later New York correspondent.
In 1985 Spiegelman stood in as bureau chief in Manila for six months.
During the past decade, he had been based in Los Angeles as West Coast bureau chief and later global entertainment editor.
Spiegelman said the reason he stayed with Reuters so long was that he kept on meeting "all these nice people".
As ill-health forced him to go on medical leave, Bernd Debusmann, a long-time colleague, wrote: "I can think of few journalists – inside and outside Reuters – who can write as beautifully as Arthur. His copy has flair and style, bite, wit and insight. He can produce sparkling prose on virtually any subject. His byline is known by editors around the world, one of whom was so impressed by a particular story that he wrote to Arthur's boss at the time, Evelyn Leopold, to ask "Is Arthur Spiegelman for sale? Would my right arm be payment enough? On the basis of his piece...I'd be prepared to go higher if necessary."
“The phrase ‘larger than life’ comes to mind when one thinks of Arthur. It really fits."
Schlesinger recalled that "Arthur could be described as chaos incarnate – his office swamped with piles of books, his filing system personal and eccentric, his appearance that of a stereotypical absent minded professor, his copy littered with typographical errors. Yet out of that chaos came beautiful, clear and ordered journalism, journalism that covered a diverse range of subjects so far-reaching over his four decades that it could put the output of many a small bureau to shame. That journalism, together with Arthur's wonderful, helpful personality shaped the lives and careers and output of many a reporter following in his path."
Global managing editor Betty Wong wrote: "It's very easy to pay tribute to a legend at Reuters. What has been harder is seeing fewer Arthur Spiegelman bylines on the news file as of late. And, after all, Art could tell the story of his days at Reuters over the past 40 plus years better than anyone else. His strength in the face of adversity is humbling. He is not shy about talking about his own health but is more interested in what's going on with you and office shenanigans."
The funeral will be held at Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary, 6001 W. Centinela Avenue, Los Angeles (link below) at 11:00 am on Tuesday 23 December. Charlotte says flowers “are not necessary” but donations to honour her husband’s memory can be made to the Sova Food Pantry (link below).
A memorial service will be held later, probably in January.
● Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary
● Sova Food Pantry
● People: The Art of being a journalist
● John Abell’s tribute
● CLICK to read tributes on the Mail page.
● SOURCE Reuters
David Chipp remembered with affection
Thursday 20 November 2008
David Chipp was remembered on Thursday as “a proper boss, a caring colleague, a faithful friend and a daring newsman”.
Those words were spoken by John Ransom, Reuters’ former area liaison manager, on behalf of colleagues from Chipp’s time half a century ago as a correspondent in Asia including Vergil Berger, Bill Gasson, Mrs Hagio, Jimmy Hahn, C.P. Ho, Ernie Mendoza and Ransom himself.
They were a happy family, Ransom said at a service of thanksgiving for Chipp, former editor of Reuters, who died in his sleep at the age of 81 on 10 September.
St Bride’s, the journalists’ church in London where Chipp was a guild member, was packed for the service. It is adjacent to 85 Fleet Street where Chipp spent much of his career, with Reuters from 1950 until 1969 when he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Press Association, national news agency of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Other tributes and readings were by Michael Nelson, former general manager, who read from Ecclesiastes 3:1-13, Reg Evans, who recalled the Chipp era at the PA, Jonathan Grun, who read an excerpt from A.G. Macdonell’s England, Their England, and Guy Black who recalled “a remarkable life lived to the full that so enriched ours”.
Black, of the Telegraph Group and former director of the Press Complaints Commission, recalled Chipp as “reporter, raconteur, bon viveur, Kingsman, oarsman, Guildsman, Honorary Australian, devout Wagnerian, defender of the press, wit and wag”.
He said: “David, of course, had various gradations of friendship. Some were honoured to be introduced as his ‘only respectable friend’. But for people he didn’t like – the pompous and the preening – there was the stiletto style put down: ‘I think he is only a fairly nice man.’”
Chipp’s time in Peking, where he trod on Chairman Mao Zedong’s toe and got away with it, was also recalled.
“Many people who trampled on Chairman Mao would have been sent on the first boat home. Or shot,” Black said. “But you can imagine Chipp fixing Mao with his broad grin, and the twinkle in the eye, and quipping his way out of trouble.
“Mao himself, of course, became part of the family of friends, even giving David his very own Chinese name – ‘Qi Dewei’ which David would proudly explain meant: ‘Lacquered Defender of Morals’.”
Ian MacKenzie’s photo shows Chipp on his way to the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in London in November 2007.
Obituary: Daniel Sullivan
Wednesday 12 November 2008
Daniel Sullivan, former assistant communications supervisor and one of Reuters’ last uniformed messengers, died on 6 November 2008 aged 93.
Sullivan joined in 1929 as a 14-year-old messenger boy in the company’s blue uniform with brass buttons. His father, a London docker, had a friend who had recommended Rooters, as they called it, as a good job for the boy.
Sullivan’s messenger boy number was 53 and his wages were 16 shillings – equivalent to 80 pence now – per week. He worked his way up to number 36. At the age of 18 he moved to Despatch as a clerk/typist. Having learned to touch type at Reuters, during World War II he worked for the RAF as a telegraphist,. He returned to Reuters in 1947 and became a supervisor in the 1960s.
The funeral is at 12:45 pm on 20 November at Beckenham Crematorium.
The photo of Sullivan dates from 1983.
Sullivan joined in 1929 as a 14-year-old messenger boy in the company’s blue uniform with brass buttons. His father, a London docker, had a friend who had recommended Rooters, as they called it, as a good job for the boy.
Sullivan’s messenger boy number was 53 and his wages were 16 shillings – equivalent to 80 pence now – per week. He worked his way up to number 36. At the age of 18 he moved to Despatch as a clerk/typist. Having learned to touch type at Reuters, during World War II he worked for the RAF as a telegraphist,. He returned to Reuters in 1947 and became a supervisor in the 1960s.
The funeral is at 12:45 pm on 20 November at Beckenham Crematorium.
The photo of Sullivan dates from 1983.
Steve Parry Memorial on 28 November
Thursday 06 November 2008
Friends and ex-colleagues of former Reuters sports editor Steve Parry, who passed away suddenly on 7 August, are invited to come together to remember Steve and celebrate his life.
Date: Friday, 28 November
Time: 11:00 am
Venue: Pitchside West restaurant at Wembley Stadium, London
Refreshments available
Please confirm your attendance by 21 November to Caroline Helly
● caroline.helly@thomsonreuters.com
Paul Radford
Global Sports Editor
Reuters
Date: Friday, 28 November
Time: 11:00 am
Venue: Pitchside West restaurant at Wembley Stadium, London
Refreshments available
Please confirm your attendance by 21 November to Caroline Helly
● caroline.helly@thomsonreuters.com
Paul Radford
Global Sports Editor
Reuters
Obituary: Ron Howard
Friday 17 October 2008
Ron Howard, former correspondent and chief sub-editor, died overnight after a short illness. He was 65.
Howard, a Canadian, joined Reuters in 1967 and initially worked on Westhem, the London desk that provided reports in American English for North America in the days before Reuters had a substantial editorial operation in the United States.
Assignments to Singapore and Lusaka followed, but it was as a solid desk man that he was best known and in the early 1990s, as a pillar of the Business Unit in London, he helped in the creation and launch of the Reuter Business Report in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
On retirement in 1999 he was a chief sub-editor on the World Desk, London.
Golf was a passion, and he was for many years an active member of Reuters Golf Society.
Following a recent holiday in Canada with his wife, Carol, cancer was diagnosed last month.
A Service of Thanksgiving will be held at 2:00 pm on Friday, 24 October in Holy Cross Church, Ramsbury, Wiltshire followed by a gathering at The Bell, The Square, Ramsbury.
Howard, a Canadian, joined Reuters in 1967 and initially worked on Westhem, the London desk that provided reports in American English for North America in the days before Reuters had a substantial editorial operation in the United States.
Assignments to Singapore and Lusaka followed, but it was as a solid desk man that he was best known and in the early 1990s, as a pillar of the Business Unit in London, he helped in the creation and launch of the Reuter Business Report in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
On retirement in 1999 he was a chief sub-editor on the World Desk, London.
Golf was a passion, and he was for many years an active member of Reuters Golf Society.
Following a recent holiday in Canada with his wife, Carol, cancer was diagnosed last month.
A Service of Thanksgiving will be held at 2:00 pm on Friday, 24 October in Holy Cross Church, Ramsbury, Wiltshire followed by a gathering at The Bell, The Square, Ramsbury.
Obituary: Alan White
Wednesday 08 October 2008
Alan White, former head of global technical operations, died peacefully in his sleep at home in France on 26 September, aged 60.
Alan joined Reuters in Bahrain in 1984 having worked in the Gulf with Cable & Wireless. He moved to Hong Kong in 1986 to become operations manager, Reuters Asia and my deputy, Phil Arnett writes. In 1990 he moved to Japan to take the new post of operations director, North East Asia.
When I left Reuters Asia in 1992 he took over as technical director, Reuters Asia. During his time in the Far East he proved to be an outstanding operations manager, staying very cool and in command when others around him were flapping. He had many achievements but those he will be best remembered for was the move of the Main Technical Centre, initially from Hong Kong to Tokyo and then planning for the move of the MTC from Tokyo to Singapore.
He took up his first Reuters post in the UK at the end of 1994 as international systems strategy and project manager and had various roles in Operations before taking up his last post as head of global technical operations in June 2000. His major achievements whilst in London were setting up a global communications strategy, including the formation of Radianz and the establishment of a global operations function which controlled the world’s data centres. Alan took early retirement at the end of 2000.
Alan was a man of few words but what he did say was usually sensible and constructive. His Mancunian wit was brilliant and he regularly had his Japanese staff tied up in knots not knowing whether he was being serious or not. He had a fantastic relationship with his staff in Hong Kong and Tokyo and they loved him dearly. This was evident by the many that turned up for his farewell party in London, most of whom travelled at their own expense.
After Alan left Reuters he divided his time between his home in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire and his property in France.
He is survived by his wife Val and his children Andrew, Steve and Julia.
Alan joined Reuters in Bahrain in 1984 having worked in the Gulf with Cable & Wireless. He moved to Hong Kong in 1986 to become operations manager, Reuters Asia and my deputy, Phil Arnett writes. In 1990 he moved to Japan to take the new post of operations director, North East Asia.
When I left Reuters Asia in 1992 he took over as technical director, Reuters Asia. During his time in the Far East he proved to be an outstanding operations manager, staying very cool and in command when others around him were flapping. He had many achievements but those he will be best remembered for was the move of the Main Technical Centre, initially from Hong Kong to Tokyo and then planning for the move of the MTC from Tokyo to Singapore.
He took up his first Reuters post in the UK at the end of 1994 as international systems strategy and project manager and had various roles in Operations before taking up his last post as head of global technical operations in June 2000. His major achievements whilst in London were setting up a global communications strategy, including the formation of Radianz and the establishment of a global operations function which controlled the world’s data centres. Alan took early retirement at the end of 2000.
Alan was a man of few words but what he did say was usually sensible and constructive. His Mancunian wit was brilliant and he regularly had his Japanese staff tied up in knots not knowing whether he was being serious or not. He had a fantastic relationship with his staff in Hong Kong and Tokyo and they loved him dearly. This was evident by the many that turned up for his farewell party in London, most of whom travelled at their own expense.
After Alan left Reuters he divided his time between his home in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire and his property in France.
He is survived by his wife Val and his children Andrew, Steve and Julia.
Obituary: David Mathew
Saturday 20 September 2008
David Mathew, former correspondent and editor, has died suddenly at his home in Sarasota, Florida, of an apparent heart attack. He was 79.
An Australian-born, softly-spoken gentle giant, Mathew was a stalwart of the World Desk in London. He worked for Reuters from 1957 to 1991.
Brian Bain, former editor and a close neighbour in Sarasota, gave the news. Mathew had not been ill prior to his death on Tuesday, Bain said.
Obituary: David Chipp
Wednesday 10 September 2008
David Chipp, former editor of Reuters, has died at the age of 81. His family said the body was found overnight at his home in London. He appears to have died in his sleep.
Chipp joined Reuters in 1950 as a sports reporter. He was assigned to South East Asia in 1953, opening the post-war bureau in Rangoon and covering fighting in Burma and Indo-China. In 1956 he became Reuters’ first resident correspondent in Peking since the 1949 Communist takeover and mixed with the Communist leadership of Mao Zedong.
“Assiduous and engaging, Chipp developed a good working relationship with the Communist authorities,” Donald Read wrote in Reuters’ official history The Power of News. “Most of his stories were descriptive, telling about the condition of the people. He also reported major political speeches, and interviewed Chou En-lai and other leaders, as well as Pu Yi, ‘the last Emperor’.”
Chipp’s interview with the imprisoned Pu Yi scooped the world. Later he recalled that “If not the best or most important story I wrote from China, it was probably the strangest and most original.”
Chipp was appointed editor of Reuters in 1968 and the following year became editor-in-chief of the Press Association, national news agency of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
“Journalism should be fun and if we don’t find it so, we might as well be bank clerks,” Chipp said at his first editorial conference at the PA.
In 1979, PA telegraphists supported a strike by regional journalists by decreeing they would only handle copy edited by Chipp.
He edited the PA’s entire news service – general news, sports, business news, stock prices and picture captions – for seven weeks, keeping up the news flow to regional newspapers.
When the PA was accused by Labour MP Dennis Skinner of being biased, the agency reported the allegation but Chipp added his own comment to the story: “We have issued this drivel from Skinner because otherwise he would accuse us of censorship. His accusation is an insult to every journalist working for PA.”
Chipp retired in 1986. His many interests in retirement included a directorship of the Reuters Foundation.
The funeral will take place at Chiltern Crematorium, Amersham on Wednesday, 17 September at 10:45 am. Family and close friends only.
Letters about David Chipp may be written to his sister, but no telephone calls: Mrs Rosemary Wight, The Old School, Hinton on the Green, Evesham, Worcester WR11 2QU.
● SOURCE The Canadian Press | Belfast Telegraph | Reuters | The Times
Chipp joined Reuters in 1950 as a sports reporter. He was assigned to South East Asia in 1953, opening the post-war bureau in Rangoon and covering fighting in Burma and Indo-China. In 1956 he became Reuters’ first resident correspondent in Peking since the 1949 Communist takeover and mixed with the Communist leadership of Mao Zedong.
“Assiduous and engaging, Chipp developed a good working relationship with the Communist authorities,” Donald Read wrote in Reuters’ official history The Power of News. “Most of his stories were descriptive, telling about the condition of the people. He also reported major political speeches, and interviewed Chou En-lai and other leaders, as well as Pu Yi, ‘the last Emperor’.”
Chipp’s interview with the imprisoned Pu Yi scooped the world. Later he recalled that “If not the best or most important story I wrote from China, it was probably the strangest and most original.”
Chipp was appointed editor of Reuters in 1968 and the following year became editor-in-chief of the Press Association, national news agency of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
“Journalism should be fun and if we don’t find it so, we might as well be bank clerks,” Chipp said at his first editorial conference at the PA.
In 1979, PA telegraphists supported a strike by regional journalists by decreeing they would only handle copy edited by Chipp.
He edited the PA’s entire news service – general news, sports, business news, stock prices and picture captions – for seven weeks, keeping up the news flow to regional newspapers.
When the PA was accused by Labour MP Dennis Skinner of being biased, the agency reported the allegation but Chipp added his own comment to the story: “We have issued this drivel from Skinner because otherwise he would accuse us of censorship. His accusation is an insult to every journalist working for PA.”
Chipp retired in 1986. His many interests in retirement included a directorship of the Reuters Foundation.
The funeral will take place at Chiltern Crematorium, Amersham on Wednesday, 17 September at 10:45 am. Family and close friends only.
Letters about David Chipp may be written to his sister, but no telephone calls: Mrs Rosemary Wight, The Old School, Hinton on the Green, Evesham, Worcester WR11 2QU.
● SOURCE The Canadian Press | Belfast Telegraph | Reuters | The Times
Obituary: Basil Chapman
Tuesday 26 August 2008
Basil Chapman, former assistant world services editor in London, has died at the age of 90. A notice in The Daily Telegraph said he died on 20 August.
Chapman moved to Francueil in the Indre-et-Loire near Tours, France on his retirement in 1983 after 30 years with Reuters. Five years later he returned to the office to research and write a series of monographs on famous people and events in Reuters’ history. They were published in the staff magazine Reuters World throughout 1988 and later re-printed on art paper, framed and hung in Reuters’ offices around the world. Go to ● Archives to see an online version.
Allan Barker, a colleague of Chapman’s, writes: “Basil was a great journalist who excelled in his later years in the 1960s and 70s as a desk editor and fireman sent into the French-speaking areas in times of crisis. He was a bit older than most of his World Desk contemporaries, and was much respected for his all-round knowledge and ability.
“He never panicked under pressure, especially when he was appraising stories prior to filing them to the world, and as Chief Sub he often wrote smooth wrapups and leadalls with proper balance and readability. His knowledge of France and the French was always a great bonus for him and the Desk in those days.
“And he was a man of letters, too, as he showed soon after retirement when he wrote an engaging portrait of Ian Fleming for the Reuters monthly review.”
The funeral is on 2 September at 2:30 pm at Kingsbury Methodist Church, Warwickshire.
Chapman moved to Francueil in the Indre-et-Loire near Tours, France on his retirement in 1983 after 30 years with Reuters. Five years later he returned to the office to research and write a series of monographs on famous people and events in Reuters’ history. They were published in the staff magazine Reuters World throughout 1988 and later re-printed on art paper, framed and hung in Reuters’ offices around the world. Go to ● Archives to see an online version.
Allan Barker, a colleague of Chapman’s, writes: “Basil was a great journalist who excelled in his later years in the 1960s and 70s as a desk editor and fireman sent into the French-speaking areas in times of crisis. He was a bit older than most of his World Desk contemporaries, and was much respected for his all-round knowledge and ability.
“He never panicked under pressure, especially when he was appraising stories prior to filing them to the world, and as Chief Sub he often wrote smooth wrapups and leadalls with proper balance and readability. His knowledge of France and the French was always a great bonus for him and the Desk in those days.
“And he was a man of letters, too, as he showed soon after retirement when he wrote an engaging portrait of Ian Fleming for the Reuters monthly review.”
The funeral is on 2 September at 2:30 pm at Kingsbury Methodist Church, Warwickshire.
Sea eagle ‘Alan’ soars over Scotland
Thursday 14 August 2008
A sea eagle named for Alan Thomas, former correspondent and news editor who died in April, was released into the wild in Scotland on Thursday thanks to a large collection made at his funeral.
"Alan", one of 15 chicks collected from nests in Norway and brought to Scotland in June, was named by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds after discussions with Thomas's widow, Mary.
The white-tailed sea eagle was released in Fife, eastern Scotland, in an ongoing project aimed at re-introducing the species to the region. The birds are known as "flying barn doors" because of their huge wingspan – up to 8 feet (nearly 2.5 metres) – and are Scotland's largest bird of prey.
"Alan" and other newly released sea eagles now soaring in Scottish skies are radio-tagged so that their progress can be tracked.
Alan Thomas, who died suddenly on 22 April aged 65, was an avid bird-watcher. The £800 collected at his funeral on 10 May founded the Alan Thomas Feather Fund for ongoing care of the birds through the RSPB. It was the largest such collection ever received by the organisation.
"Alan told me before he died that sea eagles were going to be released and he was very excited about it," Mary said. “‘Alan’ is now flying over the countryside where we spent our last holiday together.”
● CLICK to see the BBC video report | VIDEO
"Alan", one of 15 chicks collected from nests in Norway and brought to Scotland in June, was named by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds after discussions with Thomas's widow, Mary.
The white-tailed sea eagle was released in Fife, eastern Scotland, in an ongoing project aimed at re-introducing the species to the region. The birds are known as "flying barn doors" because of their huge wingspan – up to 8 feet (nearly 2.5 metres) – and are Scotland's largest bird of prey.
"Alan" and other newly released sea eagles now soaring in Scottish skies are radio-tagged so that their progress can be tracked.
Alan Thomas, who died suddenly on 22 April aged 65, was an avid bird-watcher. The £800 collected at his funeral on 10 May founded the Alan Thomas Feather Fund for ongoing care of the birds through the RSPB. It was the largest such collection ever received by the organisation.
"Alan told me before he died that sea eagles were going to be released and he was very excited about it," Mary said. “‘Alan’ is now flying over the countryside where we spent our last holiday together.”
● CLICK to see the BBC video report | VIDEO
Obituary: Steve Parry
Thursday 07 August 2008
Steve Parry, sports editor for nearly two decades, died on Thursday at the age of 64. Parry, who was sports editor from 1982 to 2000 and a member of the International Olympic Committee press commission during that time, had suffered from a respiratory illness.
He died in hospital in Hemel Hempstead, near his home north of London, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, having attended the previous 10 Summer Games.
Parry joined Reuters Sports Desk in London in 1966 and covered his first Olympics in Mexico City in 1968.
An incisive and knowledgeable reporter, calm under pressure, Parry took on the athletics beat at the 1972 Munich Games and made the number one Olympic sport his own for a decade.
He covered track and field at the next two Games, never wasting a word in fluent and speedy copy, and remained close to the sport after he moved up in Reuters.
Appointed sports news editor in 1977, Parry was promoted to the job of sports editor at Reuters in 1982 and ran the operation with imagination, assurance and great expertise.
He expanded its role, appointing the first Reuters sports correspondents based abroad, one in Paris and one in Bonn, in 1984.
Firm and clear-sighted in his direction of the sports operation, he was benignly tolerant of his Reuters “band on the run” at Olympics around the world.
Outside work, he was an accomplished amateur actor and made the occasional fleeting television appearance after gaining his card as a member of the actors' union Equity.
After retiring from Reuters following the 2000 Sydney Games, Parry became a consultant for the IOC. He later became a media adviser for London's successful bid for the 2012 Olympics and then a press operations consultant for the London Games organisers.
Parry was advising both the IOC and London until his untimely death. He was recently advised by his doctor that his health was not up to the rigours of one more Olympic adventure in Beijing.
Reuters' current sports editor Paul Radford, Parry’s former deputy and a close personal friend, said: “We at Reuters are devastated by the news. Steve was one of the finest journalists Reuters ever had and one of the greatest men I ever knew.
“He was one of the most revered and respected personalities in the world of sports journalism and a monumental figure in the Olympic movement.”
Parry is survived by his wife, Di, and their daughter, and two sons from an earlier marriage.
● SOURCE Reuters
He died in hospital in Hemel Hempstead, near his home north of London, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, having attended the previous 10 Summer Games.
Parry joined Reuters Sports Desk in London in 1966 and covered his first Olympics in Mexico City in 1968.
An incisive and knowledgeable reporter, calm under pressure, Parry took on the athletics beat at the 1972 Munich Games and made the number one Olympic sport his own for a decade.
He covered track and field at the next two Games, never wasting a word in fluent and speedy copy, and remained close to the sport after he moved up in Reuters.
Appointed sports news editor in 1977, Parry was promoted to the job of sports editor at Reuters in 1982 and ran the operation with imagination, assurance and great expertise.
He expanded its role, appointing the first Reuters sports correspondents based abroad, one in Paris and one in Bonn, in 1984.
Firm and clear-sighted in his direction of the sports operation, he was benignly tolerant of his Reuters “band on the run” at Olympics around the world.
Outside work, he was an accomplished amateur actor and made the occasional fleeting television appearance after gaining his card as a member of the actors' union Equity.
After retiring from Reuters following the 2000 Sydney Games, Parry became a consultant for the IOC. He later became a media adviser for London's successful bid for the 2012 Olympics and then a press operations consultant for the London Games organisers.
Parry was advising both the IOC and London until his untimely death. He was recently advised by his doctor that his health was not up to the rigours of one more Olympic adventure in Beijing.
Reuters' current sports editor Paul Radford, Parry’s former deputy and a close personal friend, said: “We at Reuters are devastated by the news. Steve was one of the finest journalists Reuters ever had and one of the greatest men I ever knew.
“He was one of the most revered and respected personalities in the world of sports journalism and a monumental figure in the Olympic movement.”
Parry is survived by his wife, Di, and their daughter, and two sons from an earlier marriage.
● SOURCE Reuters
Olympics tribute to Steve Parry
Thursday 07 August 2008
The Olympic movement led tributes to Steve Parry, former Reuters sports editor, who died on Thursday on the eve of the Summer Games in Beijing.
“We were saddened by the death of Steve Parry,” Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, said in a statement to Reuters. He sent the condolences of the Olympic movement to Parry’s family.
Parry, 64, sports editor from 1982 to 2000 and a member of the International Olympic Committee press commission during that time, died in hospital near London after a respiratory illness.
“He was my faithful barometer of bad news,” IOC press commission chairman Kevan Gosper said. “He was a great news man. He grew in my eyes as one of the most professional journalists in my experience. He understood the absolute need for integrity in reporting. He was admired by his journalist colleagues and a valued member of the IOC press commission. It’s a great personal loss and a great loss to his profession.”
Simon Haydon, The Associated Press’s international sports editor, said: “Steve was a clear-headed and firm editor who did not suffer fools gladly. Many a junior writer felt the rough edge of his tongue if an introduction failed to tell the story clearly. Officialdom often felt the full force of his blunt speaking if it stood in the way of his reporters.
“On the other hand, Steve could also show endless patience to help a reporter get the story written in the right way,” said Haydon, who worked under Parry at Reuters in the 1990s.
AP sports editor Terry Taylor said: “Steve was a formidable competitor and a terrific, effective advocate for all journalists who have covered Olympics. He was the voice of reason — and outrage on many occasions. We will miss him.”
Morley Myers of the Sports Journalists’ Association, said: “This sad news is a great loss to British sports journalism, as well as a huge personal loss for me.
“We worked very closely together in the late 60s and after I left Reuters we continued our friendship as we met at major sports events worldwide. In recent years Steve had worked very closely with the IOC and he promoted the cause of all sports journalists in helping to improve their working conditions at Olympic Games.”
In an official statement from the London 2012 Olympics organisers, a spokesman said: “Steve was involved with London 2012 from the early stages of the bid and played a major role in helping us bring the Games to London.
“His candid advice, expert knowledge and exceptional humour will be sorely missed by everyone connected to London 2012, and the wider Olympic family. We send our deepest sympathy to his family at this very sad time.“
● SOURCE International Herald Tribune | Sports Journalists’ Association
“We were saddened by the death of Steve Parry,” Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, said in a statement to Reuters. He sent the condolences of the Olympic movement to Parry’s family.
Parry, 64, sports editor from 1982 to 2000 and a member of the International Olympic Committee press commission during that time, died in hospital near London after a respiratory illness.
“He was my faithful barometer of bad news,” IOC press commission chairman Kevan Gosper said. “He was a great news man. He grew in my eyes as one of the most professional journalists in my experience. He understood the absolute need for integrity in reporting. He was admired by his journalist colleagues and a valued member of the IOC press commission. It’s a great personal loss and a great loss to his profession.”
Simon Haydon, The Associated Press’s international sports editor, said: “Steve was a clear-headed and firm editor who did not suffer fools gladly. Many a junior writer felt the rough edge of his tongue if an introduction failed to tell the story clearly. Officialdom often felt the full force of his blunt speaking if it stood in the way of his reporters.
“On the other hand, Steve could also show endless patience to help a reporter get the story written in the right way,” said Haydon, who worked under Parry at Reuters in the 1990s.
AP sports editor Terry Taylor said: “Steve was a formidable competitor and a terrific, effective advocate for all journalists who have covered Olympics. He was the voice of reason — and outrage on many occasions. We will miss him.”
Morley Myers of the Sports Journalists’ Association, said: “This sad news is a great loss to British sports journalism, as well as a huge personal loss for me.
“We worked very closely together in the late 60s and after I left Reuters we continued our friendship as we met at major sports events worldwide. In recent years Steve had worked very closely with the IOC and he promoted the cause of all sports journalists in helping to improve their working conditions at Olympic Games.”
In an official statement from the London 2012 Olympics organisers, a spokesman said: “Steve was involved with London 2012 from the early stages of the bid and played a major role in helping us bring the Games to London.
“His candid advice, expert knowledge and exceptional humour will be sorely missed by everyone connected to London 2012, and the wider Olympic family. We send our deepest sympathy to his family at this very sad time.“
● SOURCE International Herald Tribune | Sports Journalists’ Association
Obituary: Gerry Peterson
Tuesday 24 June 2008
Gerry Peterson, assistant to Reuters correspondents in The Hague in the 1970s and 1980s, has died at the age of 83. He had fought cancer for several years.
Initially seconded from the English bulletin desk of the Dutch news agency ANP, Gerry later joined Reuters’ staff and became a mainstay of coverage of the Netherlands over many years.
Scott Thornton, who worked with him from 1978 to 1981, said: “Gerry was a marvellous ambassador for Reuters. His natural charm was enhanced by a velvety smooth voice which would have done credit to an old-style BBC announcer. His great knowledge of the Netherlands and contacts throughout the country were invaluable for a succession of correspondents and visitors.
“Whenever strains arose in Reuters’ relationship with ANP, which had been the exclusive distributor of Reuters services in the Netherlands until the company set up its own operation, they were generally soothed by his diplomacy and good humour.
“A straightforward, honourable man, he won great respect from a vast range of individuals and organisations. His social staying power was immense and he was usually one of the last guests to leave receptions where his contacts included catering staff who knew his favourite tipple was Dutch gin rather than other more grandiose drinks offered to mere ambassadors, sports stars and captains of industry.”
He and his Dutch wife Lis had the most romantic and traumatic of first encounters: he was a young lieutenant on a British warship taking prisoners of war home from Singapore in 1945; she was a beautiful teenager who had just been released after several years in a Japanese internment camp.
Born near Croydon in Surrey (he remained a staunch supporter of Crystal Palace football club), Gerry and Lis moved to the Hague after the War and had two daughters and one son during the happiest of marriages.
Gerry Peterson died on 29 May. He is survived by his wife, children and seven grandchildren.
Initially seconded from the English bulletin desk of the Dutch news agency ANP, Gerry later joined Reuters’ staff and became a mainstay of coverage of the Netherlands over many years.
Scott Thornton, who worked with him from 1978 to 1981, said: “Gerry was a marvellous ambassador for Reuters. His natural charm was enhanced by a velvety smooth voice which would have done credit to an old-style BBC announcer. His great knowledge of the Netherlands and contacts throughout the country were invaluable for a succession of correspondents and visitors.
“Whenever strains arose in Reuters’ relationship with ANP, which had been the exclusive distributor of Reuters services in the Netherlands until the company set up its own operation, they were generally soothed by his diplomacy and good humour.
“A straightforward, honourable man, he won great respect from a vast range of individuals and organisations. His social staying power was immense and he was usually one of the last guests to leave receptions where his contacts included catering staff who knew his favourite tipple was Dutch gin rather than other more grandiose drinks offered to mere ambassadors, sports stars and captains of industry.”
He and his Dutch wife Lis had the most romantic and traumatic of first encounters: he was a young lieutenant on a British warship taking prisoners of war home from Singapore in 1945; she was a beautiful teenager who had just been released after several years in a Japanese internment camp.
Born near Croydon in Surrey (he remained a staunch supporter of Crystal Palace football club), Gerry and Lis moved to the Hague after the War and had two daughters and one son during the happiest of marriages.
Gerry Peterson died on 29 May. He is survived by his wife, children and seven grandchildren.
Obituary: David Mitchell
Tuesday 17 June 2008
David Mitchell, who with Tom Guinan created, deployed and maintained the editing system still in use in RAM and elsewhere, has died. Word from a mutual colleague is that Mitchell passed away a few weeks ago. I have no other details, but would welcome hearing any about this great man.
Mitchell and his cohorts were the Reuters equivalents of the Internet Gray Beards: they practically invented everything that US journalists use to write and edit stories using Decade on System 77 – which was System 55 back in Mitchell's day – and decided on concepts and workflows and interfaces that seem to this day as the only way to do it right.
David was one of the first technical people I encountered as a young pre-journalist; when I was a news dictationist, entering copy phoned in live from correspondents, there were endless formatting questions (agate, anyone?) as vexing then as even in more recent days. Mitchell had tremendous patience and a sense of humor which made it possible to for me to battle through one pain barrier after another.
Later on, when I needed detailed information to create third-party applications that leveraged Decade it was Mitchell again who unlocked secrets and affirmed crazy ideas that just might work. In failing health even 15 years ago, he was always available and always utterly fluent in every matter, however obscure and unintuitive, that I presented to him.
It is not an exaggeration to say the crucial early successes Reuters New Media had creating programmatic desktop publishing solutions – the core functionalities that powered real-time multimedia Internet news years ahead of the competition – was possible only because neophyte dreamers were able to stand on his shoulders.
David and I collaborated in a world that had not yet seen the phrase virtuality coined. In my 26 years at Reuters, I never met this great man. I have never even seen a picture of him.
It is with great sadness that I report the demise of this very unique individual.
John C Abell
Mitchell and his cohorts were the Reuters equivalents of the Internet Gray Beards: they practically invented everything that US journalists use to write and edit stories using Decade on System 77 – which was System 55 back in Mitchell's day – and decided on concepts and workflows and interfaces that seem to this day as the only way to do it right.
David was one of the first technical people I encountered as a young pre-journalist; when I was a news dictationist, entering copy phoned in live from correspondents, there were endless formatting questions (agate, anyone?) as vexing then as even in more recent days. Mitchell had tremendous patience and a sense of humor which made it possible to for me to battle through one pain barrier after another.
Later on, when I needed detailed information to create third-party applications that leveraged Decade it was Mitchell again who unlocked secrets and affirmed crazy ideas that just might work. In failing health even 15 years ago, he was always available and always utterly fluent in every matter, however obscure and unintuitive, that I presented to him.
It is not an exaggeration to say the crucial early successes Reuters New Media had creating programmatic desktop publishing solutions – the core functionalities that powered real-time multimedia Internet news years ahead of the competition – was possible only because neophyte dreamers were able to stand on his shoulders.
David and I collaborated in a world that had not yet seen the phrase virtuality coined. In my 26 years at Reuters, I never met this great man. I have never even seen a picture of him.
It is with great sadness that I report the demise of this very unique individual.
John C Abell
Obituary: Dolly Aglay
Monday 26 May 2008
Dolly Aglay, commodities correspondent in Manila bureau, died on Monday after a long illness. She was 41.
Aglay, who joined from the Philippine Star newspaper in 1995, had battled with cancer for nearly three years.
Bureau chief Raju Gopalakrishnan described her as a “quiet, dignified woman in the corner of the newsroom, working the phones late into the night to get an extra detail or scrap of information.
“She worked across all parts of the business file and pitched in on political and general news whenever she sensed it was needed, but completely owned the commodities beat.”
● SOURCE ABS CBN News Online
Aglay, who joined from the Philippine Star newspaper in 1995, had battled with cancer for nearly three years.
Bureau chief Raju Gopalakrishnan described her as a “quiet, dignified woman in the corner of the newsroom, working the phones late into the night to get an extra detail or scrap of information.
“She worked across all parts of the business file and pitched in on political and general news whenever she sensed it was needed, but completely owned the commodities beat.”
● SOURCE ABS CBN News Online
Obituary: Alan Thomas
Saturday 03 May 2008
Alan Thomas, who died suddenly last month, worked for Reuters from university to retirement and in those 32 years earned the admiration and affection of everyone fortunate enough to be counted a colleague.
He was a lovely, modest man, whose integrity you sensed in an instant; whose humanity was palpable and whose gently-expressed but sharply-aimed humour would hush a bar full of friends anxious to tune in to his Welsh-toned wit.
He joined Reuters as a graduate journalist in 1965. After establishing his credentials on a trainee assignment in Singapore, Alan had a series of testing postings; first to Moscow (deciphering the Cold War politics of the Soviet Union), then to Tanzania (African border conflicts and coups) and later Hong Kong (then Reuters' listening post for a region stretching from Hanoi to Pyonyang and Beijing - or Peking as it was known in the 1970s).
His Cantonese secretary there had her own way of showing her loyalty to him. "I'm pleased to meet you but you're not as handsome as Alan," was the greeting for more than one of us.
Alan, his wife Mary and two sons lived in the most enviable address in Hong Kong - the aptly-named Peak House. The highest-placed, and one of the oldest buildings on the island, it was chosen by Reuters because it was the best location to set up the aerials and receivers then needed to monitor a largely secretive region's radio stations and news agencies. On mist-shrouded nights as you walked Peak House's draughty corridors you could hear the radio traffic coming in from Asia's communist capitals.
His versatility meant he moved on to other roles...Chief Representative...Staff Executive...and as News Editor, in Asia, London and the Middle East, and during those assignments he touched so many colleagues' working lives. In an era when a well-drafted "service message" – a request from Head Office for coverage, a tip-off on how the competition was faring, an admonition of some sort – was the lifeblood of editorial operations, Alan was a master. He was meticulous, delicately insistent but always aware of the difficulties facing the frontline journalist.
He got the best from the correspondent in the field because he was fair, set standards, and showed an appreciation that never bordered on the patronising. And he was fun to be with when you next met at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club or some other journalists' watering hole.
He and Mary had more tragedy than any couple could expect. First their younger son, Luke, died while at university and then only a few years later, James, the older, also died. In their anguish, Alan and Mary found some extraordinary strength. While friends would rage at the injustice of two great parents suffering so much, they reminded them how lucky they had been to have their sons, even for such a short time.
An apparently healthy 65, Alan died without warning from a heart condition at his home in the Cornish seaside village of Polruan. We pray it will be some comfort for Mary that so many friends and colleagues share her grief. He was a lovely bloke.
David Rogers
In the photo Alan faces the camera from a seat behind the helmsman of a Fowey River water taxi during a May 2006 visit to Cornwall organised by Alan and Mary for fellow members and their partners of the Coriander Investment Club formed by retired Reuters staffers.
Death of Alan Thomas
Wednesday 23 April 2008
The following item was posted on Reuters’ internal i-Web today:
ALAN THOMAS
I'm sorry to report that Alan Thomas, a retired Reuters correspondent and news editor, died on Tuesday of a suspected heart attack.
Alan was one of our finest news editors -- when I joined in Asia in 1987 it was after his time there, but people still spoke of his skills and knowledge with awe. He lived in Cornwall but was regularly in London where he maintained contact with many old friends through various groups. Shortly after marrying Mary, he was posted to Moscow at the start of a global career that saw him serve in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He bore so much tragedy in his life with the sudden death at an early age of his youngest son Luke and then his first-born James, but with immense courage, he and Mary gradually picked up the pieces. He was a lovely man whose generous spirit, charm and wit will be greatly missed by all those that knew him.
David Schlesinger Editor-in-Chief
Reuters News
ALAN THOMAS
I'm sorry to report that Alan Thomas, a retired Reuters correspondent and news editor, died on Tuesday of a suspected heart attack.
Alan was one of our finest news editors -- when I joined in Asia in 1987 it was after his time there, but people still spoke of his skills and knowledge with awe. He lived in Cornwall but was regularly in London where he maintained contact with many old friends through various groups. Shortly after marrying Mary, he was posted to Moscow at the start of a global career that saw him serve in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He bore so much tragedy in his life with the sudden death at an early age of his youngest son Luke and then his first-born James, but with immense courage, he and Mary gradually picked up the pieces. He was a lovely man whose generous spirit, charm and wit will be greatly missed by all those that knew him.
David Schlesinger Editor-in-Chief
Reuters News
Obituary: Bill Humphries
Monday 31 March 2008
W.S. (Bill) Humphries, Reuters correspondent, editor and manager from 1962 to 1988, died on 26 March after a long illness. He was 74. He had served as a correspondent in New York, Chief Correspondent in Johannesburg, Editor Latin America during the Falklands conflict and Reuters World Service staff manager in London.
Stephen Somerville, chairman of The Reuter Society, recalled Humphries as “a fine journalist and a great colleague. He represented our profession, and Reuters, with distinction wherever he worked.”
Maurice Quaintance, former staff manager, remembered Humphries’ staff role “during a critical period in Reuters’ development.
“His gift for advising and helping editorial staff was beyond question,” Quaintance said. “I have nothing but the fondest memories of my association with him and was impressed always by his ability to go quietly about the business of solving problems without fuss. In short, he made a difference.”
Stephen Somerville, chairman of The Reuter Society, recalled Humphries as “a fine journalist and a great colleague. He represented our profession, and Reuters, with distinction wherever he worked.”
Maurice Quaintance, former staff manager, remembered Humphries’ staff role “during a critical period in Reuters’ development.
“His gift for advising and helping editorial staff was beyond question,” Quaintance said. “I have nothing but the fondest memories of my association with him and was impressed always by his ability to go quietly about the business of solving problems without fuss. In short, he made a difference.”
