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Pillow talk

The advice to women reporters to "Always sleep with the Reuters man" was fun to read and may even have stirred memories for some former correspondents.

 

The context in Julie Welch's book The Fleet Street Girls (Trapeze, 2020) is serious, however. 

 

She quotes Mary Kenny as citing her Evening Standard reporter colleague Anne Sharpley to illustrate just how ruthless women had to be to get on in the male-dominated world of British newspapers in the 1960s.

 

The full quote is 'always sleep with the Reuters man, darling, because the news desk checks your copy against Reuters, and you'll have filed before him.’

 

It's nice to believe that Reuters copy is perhaps still the benchmark for any out-of-town reporters chasing the story. ■