For journalists, Reuters' family atmosphere continues but is more limited now

On a sleepy Sunday morning in October 1983, fellow Reuters Beirut correspondent Jonathan Wright awakened me to say: “Your Marines have been blown up.” I rushed down to south Beirut to find the US Marines barracks flattened like a stack of pancakes. New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman, who filed from our office, was down there with me but in the days before cellphones he could not get the news to his newsroom. I begged a local Italian military unit to let me use their phone to call details in to Jonathan at the office, and because of the time difference we made banner headlines in the Sunday editions of the Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and others.

Hired by Francois Duriaud in 1983 to cover the peace in Beirut, I reported on four wars in 14 months, just about literally rubbing shoulders with Yasser Arafat during the one in Tripoli. I ultimately rubbed shoulders with a long string of great correspondents and editors over 32 memorable years with Reuters, to which I bid farewell on Friday after an extensive stint as Ottawa bureau chief.

On my way home from my going-away dinner in Beirut in 1984, I was driving manager Chris Inwood’s company car when we came to a makeshift Shi’ite checkpoint. They demanded to see our passports. “What right do you have to see our passports?” I asked. One of them reached in with a pistol, cocked it and put it to my head. “Here’s my passport,” I quickly offered. They made all of us get out of the car, and then drove off with the vehicle.

A highlight of my career was covering some 25 OPEC conferences, learning aggressive reporting techniques that stood me well for later G20 meetings and “scrums” in the Canadian parliament. OPEC coverage leader Nick Moore gathered his Reuters team together to tell us to apply what his father used in the British military, when phoning in snaps: “BASS - Brevity, Accuracy, Security and Speed”. He didn’t want us calling up to waffle, “Nick, I think I may have a snap about quotas from the Saudi minister, and …” Moore’s terse instructions: “Just say, ‘SNAP, Saudi minister says…’”

I reported in two separate postings in Bahrain, the first of which was during the Reuters Middle East heyday with a huge staff in the regional headquarters there. We considered it in many ways still a family company then. Duriaud would regularly have the entire editorial team and spouses for dinner. Peter Job, later to head Reuters, even dropped in from Hong Kong for dinner one night. In a limited way, the family atmosphere continues when teams gather from around the world for events like IMF meetings.

In between Bahrain assignments, I spent five years in Geneva covering the World Trade Organization’s predecessor, US-Soviet arms talks, Iran-Iraq peace talks, ivory talks, and Afghan peace talks. My desk was next to that of the legendary Ronnie Farquhar, famed for covering the Soviet Union’s crushing of the 1956 Budapest uprising. Appropriately, one of my Geneva bosses was Reuters’ former Moscow bureau chief, Bob Evans.

The Bahrainis refused to renew my visa in my second post there because I reported on the security forces of the Sunni-ruled government firing tear gas into a Shi’ite mosque, so I moved to Dubai before heading to Ottawa shortly thereafter.

In Ottawa since 1995, I covered the near breakup of Canada in the Quebec sovereignty referendum; seven federal elections with the swing from Liberal to Conservative and back; and some 20 budgets. Half my career was marked by powerfully productive teamwork in Ottawa with national political correspondent David Ljunggren.

I was moved by the flood of tributes upon leaving, ranging from dear colleagues within Reuters to the Bloomberg bureau chief. I am now mulling various employment options in Ottawa and aim to stay active in public life.

PHOTO: The last photo of Randall Palmer (right) as a Reuters correspondent, "scrumming" Canadian foreign minister Stephane Dion in the foyer of the House of Commons in Ottawa last week. (Canadian Press) ■