Obituary: David Mitchell

Mitchell and his cohorts were the Reuters equivalents of the Internet Gray Beards: they practically invented everything that US journalists use to write and edit stories using Decade on System 77 - which was System 55 back in Mitchell's day - and decided on concepts and workflows and interfaces that seem to this day as the only way to do it right.

David was one of the first technical people I encountered as a young pre-journalist; when I was a news dictationist, entering copy phoned in live from correspondents, there were endless formatting questions (agate, anyone?) as vexing then as even in more recent days. Mitchell had tremendous patience and a sense of humor which made it possible to for me to battle through one pain barrier after another.

Later on, when I needed detailed information to create third-party applications that leveraged Decade it was Mitchell again who unlocked secrets and affirmed crazy ideas that just might work. In failing health even 15 years ago, he was always available and always utterly fluent in every matter, however obscure and unintuitive, that I presented to him.

It is not an exaggeration to say the crucial early successes Reuters New Media had creating programmatic desktop publishing solutions - the core functionalities that powered real-time multimedia Internet news years ahead of the competition - was possible only because neophyte dreamers were able to stand on his shoulders.

David and I collaborated in a world that had not yet seen the phrase virtuality coined. In my 26 years at Reuters, I never met this great man. I have never even seen a picture of him.

It is with great sadness that I report the demise of this very unique individual. ■