Obituary-Brian Shafer, who played a critical role in Reuters transition from analogue to digital

Brian Shafer, a 27-year veteran of Reuters Pictures and Media, died on January 11 following a long battle with colon cancer, and just weeks after his 65th birthday.

Born in 1959 in Aurora, Ill, Brian was a well-liked and respected member of Reuters and played a critical technical role during its challenging transformation from a traditional analogue operation to the digital multimedia service it is today. 

After serving in the Army as a Cryptographics Support Specialist at the Pentagon, Brian joined UPI Washington in 1982 as a telephoto engineer. Following a two-year stint with UPI, Brian was recruited in late 1984 by Reuters to assist in the launch of the new news pictures service. This relied on the integration of Reuters systems with UPI's to enable shared content, so Brian was an ideal choice for the job.

At the time, wire service picture services used film. Prints were optically scanned on a drum and sent as an audible signal to newspaper receivers around the world. In the late 1980s, industry technical advances triggered a transformation, first to digital scanning of film negatives, then to electronic transmitters and client based electronic picture desks. The final stone in the foundation of this new technology was the adoption in 1992 of the JPEG photo compression standard.

Brian stayed on top of these rapid changes as they engulfed the industry. He harnessed them to build satellite distribution networks, deploy new client-based receiving systems and integrate digital cameras. With his guidance, Reuters was in the vanguard of photojournalism's transformation from analogue to digital. 

At the end of Brian's long Reuters career came the holy grail of news distribution - multimedia news packages that integrated photos, graphics and ultimately video with text so that they were ready for direct publication in the "new media" exploding into the marketplace. 

When Reuters in 1994 spun off a unit called Reuters New Media to make this content for the internet , they took Brian with them to their then new Reston, Va. headquarters. There, a group of innovators facilitated real-time delivery of new multi-media services to the likes of Yahoo, CompuServe and AOL. This unit was so successful that Reuters New Media was reunited with the Washington bureau a decade later.

Brian was understated. He went about his work without seeking attention and he was really great with clients, which led Reuters to get him involved in promoting the new products and services that the Media team was designing. In this role, he helped Reuters innovate to meet the issues faced by clients grappling with the new era of digital content and internet integration.

After leaving the agency in 2012 as Manager, Media Distributions Reuters America,  Brian and his wife Susy took advantage of her talents as a quilter and opened "Suzzie's Quilt Shop" in their hometown of Manassas, Virginia where they raised their two children; Brianna and Matthew.  ■