Trainees

What a list of Reuters journos and what an impact you have had on our newsroom culture [Reuters trainees past and present]! I was lucky enough when I started out in New York to sit beside Alan Wheatley, Alex Nicoll and Phil Wardle, who had immense patience explaining financial markets to a cub newspaper reporter from the Midwest. They seemed so sophisticated and worldly, and scary smart with a repartee I dared not join.

Other close and valued colleagues of mine from the trainee line were Nick Moore, David Storey, Anne Senior, Keith Weir, James Dalgleish, Chizu Nomiyama, Martin Langfield, Lyndsay Griffiths, Sonya Hepinstall, to name just a few.

What a disparate lot! The thread connecting all of them was their serious dedication as journalists, balanced with a valuable sense of humor that helped in the midst of global disasters and market meltdowns. A defining trait? Perhaps, and add to that a confidence in themselves that journalists should have. Sometimes it was downright embarrassing, as when a group of us non-trainees dined with Wheatley at a Paris no-name restaurant that our guide Nelson Graves had curated for a special night, with haute cuisine of off-the-Michelin-charts quality. Alan “I’m-proud-to-be-a-Yorkie” ordered shepherd’s pie cooked to order. Obviously, when he was in New York we taught him something he brought with him on his world travels. Chutzpa! Gratifying to know we could give something back to them.

Glad to see Belinda Goldsmith and the rest of you keeping this great tradition alive. ■