Jack Hartzman

Jack Hartzman was much admired by correspondents in the field and fellow editors in his career at Reuters and it’s abundantly clear in the mail pieces on The Baron since his death that JH was a real “character”.

He once told me he had never had any ambition to join the rat race in Washington, London Bureau or any other world news centre, believing his spot in life was mapped out to be the London desk. I think he believed he should have gained extra points for this but I doubt that it did in the Macdowall era when management liked senior people to be masters of all trades - reporters, desk editors, analysts, etc, whatever was necessary at the time.

Jack was an early member of a revamped World Desk under Stuart Underhill in 1966-7 and proved himself a wonderful processor of copy with his blue pen. That was a time when the subs were briefly encouraged to rewrite copy from the field to make it more lively and distinctive. Even Macdowall dispatches from Bonn got the treatment but Ian pretty soon made sure the experiment was dropped after a revolt by those in the field.

When Jack was day editor he put a lot of thought into the morning news schedule issued at 11:00 am. After it ran out to subscribers it was time for an early morning Scotch for him at the pub, a pipe-opener for the more serious lunchtime intake with friends and fellow staffers that often followed.

The sked was the subject of a memorable clash in the early 1980s after Manfred Pagel became editor and sought to Europeanise the World Desk. At the morning news conference Manfred asked Jack why he had led the sked with a US presidential-election debate due to start at 2:00 am London time rather than a story on the Polish Pope returning to Warsaw. Jack indignantly rejected the challenge. As we walked out of the room he made clear to me that the sked would never swing to European while he was at the desk. Maybe he lost that one on points, in my view at least, but he always remained true to his journalistic principles. A man to admire. ■