Dave Graves: Internet news pioneer with an unpredictable twist

I worked with Dave Graves nearly every day for six years at Reuters New Media (and later when we dropped “New" and became, again, Reuters Media). He was our strategy guy and I ran sales.

In the mid-1990s, we could feel the earth moving but didn't fully realize the strength of the seismic shift occurring in the world of news and information.  

The birth of the "interwebs" was messy, confusing and kind of scary especially for old-line news services like the Associated Press, Dow Jones and Reuters, whose traditional media customers saw mostly trouble ahead.  

But Reuters had a ringer: Dave Graves, son of a Unipresser and veteran of news radio. Despite the smoke surrounding the earliest days of this new medium, Dave's internal compass -- his gut instinct for knowing what would-be Web publishers and their readers wanted from this online thing -- kept Reuters pointed in the right direction.  

And what direction was that? What could the world's largest provider of news and information bring to the Internet?  

Dave's answer: More and Faster.  More stories tailored for widely diverse (and non-English speaking) global audiences. More news video. More news photos. And getting it all out there before anyone. (He once compared what Reuters was doing online to his days in all-news radio. It was clear to me, at that time, what he realized before most of the rest of us.)

Dave’s insights were, for the most part, predictably spot on. What weren't so predictable, however, were his interactions with customers, such as the time he and I, along with account exec Jerome FitzGibbons, called on an online service which wasn’t — how do I say this? — 100 percent satisfied with its Reuters services.

Since the customer was located not far from Dave’s home outside Boston, he picked up Jerome and me at the airport. He said he wanted to hear what the customer had to say.

As sales manager, I had worked out a game plan for addressing the customer’s concerns. I reviewed each idea with Dave and Jerome on the ride over and had their approval.

“Sure. Yeah. Sure. Got it,” Dave assured me. We arrived and then it was time to sit down with our customer’s publisher and top editors.

About six or seven news professionals sat at the conference table facing Jerome, Dave and me. After introductions and niceties, I was going to begin with a recap of our business with the customer.

I say “was” because before I was able to begin, Dave rose from his chair, pointed an index finger at the other side and told them most bluntly that they should be grateful that Reuters was serving them, that without Reuters they would have no business and they should stop complaining about whatever was on their minds. Then he sat back down.

Stunned and clearly embarrassed, the publisher and his editorial leaders agreed their issues were “no big deal” and they were happy to work with us. Jerome and I looked at each other in disbelief. Dave looked like this was the outcome he expected.

Yes, at times Dave Graves could be a loose cannon, but he was 𝘰𝘶𝘳 loose cannon and he rarely missed the mark. ■