Obituary - David Graves helped propel Reuters into the digital age

Graves was born in New York. His talent for technical innovation gave him an illustrious career which took him from local radio to media advertising, television and online news.

He joined Reuters when the agency bought his tech start-up, which connected advertising agencies to television, in 1994, and put him in charge of strategic business development for its New Media group.

He played a leading role in Reuters transition to online news, helping to take it to a dominant position at that time.

When Reuters senior management was denouncing the internet as an “American fad,” writes his former boss Andy Nibley, Graves was as instrumental as anyone in pushing the company into the digital age.

Nibley described Graves as a “legitimate visionary and futurist who was arguably the first person to sell news on the internet as part of a deal with Yahoo! (in 1995).”

From Reuters, Graves moved to Yahoo! Itself in 2001. He later founded a media consulting company and was an innovator in video streaming technology.

He is survived by his former wife Peggy Koenig and two daughters Katie and Hannah. ■