Tony Winning-task master and bon vivant

A year before the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, I hosted a visit from two editorial titans only days after becoming bureau chief in Malaysia.

Unbeknown to me, Tony Winning, Asia’s Editorial czar, and legendary Sports Editor Steve Parry were there to thrash out who would staff the Games, which Reuters once considered a premier sporting event almost on a par with the Olympics.

Steve assumed he would name the global team of scribblers, as he had always done for such events, and that they would come from all over the globe. But Tony was adamant that on his watch, Asia -- which was hosting the Games for the first time --  would supply all of the Reuters journalists. Neither man was used to losing an argument, but Steve eventually gracefully backed off, and Tony pulled together a crack team of Asia-based journalists. It was an object lesson for me in how major decisions are made at the top.

I later learned that Tony was both a task master and a bon vivant. He came to KL during the Games, briefly toured ops at the editing desk, and then quickly headed off to catch the All Blacks and Jonah Lomu beat Fiji in the rugby sevens final. Tony brought along his wife, Fay, sending a reassuring signal to this novice bureau chief that family, not just scoops, counted, and they put my jittery wife and me at ease when we hosted them for dinner. Fay deserves all our support now.

While based in Singapore, Tony once hosted a regional bureau chiefs meeting and invited us at the end of the first day to dinner at the posh Tanglin Club. Most of us hacks took to the open bar with a vengeance, and it was not long before one bureau chief, almost fully clothed, dived into the pool, followed quickly by others. Showing as little emotion as possible under the circumstances, Tony -- his membership in the private club now in jeopardy -- abruptly sent us packing back to our hotel. Opening the morning session the next day, an impressively composed Tony made no mention of the previous evening's antics.

As a boss, Tony could be both supportive and demanding. I'd first met him years before when as Europe News Editor he came to Paris to meet the reporting teams. I'd been busy covering a messy hostile takeover of Perrier and was proud of the file I'd pulled together. "Your stories have come in on the long side," Tony told me bluntly. It was not the last time he would offer me unvarnished advice that hurt at first, but which pushed me to do better. That combination of support and admonishment set a standard that, for me, represented the best of Reuters.

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