Sean Maguire slides down the greasy pole to the exit

Global editor Sean Maguire (photo)​, called it quits on Monday, saying “My time is done” as he closed a 21-year career with Reuters.

Maguire, global editor, political and general news since 2007, made his name covering the Yugoslav conflict and the economic transformation of eastern Europe in the 1990s.

“There is a finale to even the most spectacular Reuters career and today it is my turn to bow out, as you’ll have seen from the official announcement,” he said in an e-mail to colleagues. “It’s a bittersweet moment, but one that I knew would come eventually. I have no illusions, but nor have I any regrets.”

Maguire started as a duty news organiser - “the lowest of the low” - for Visnews. “I finished as a global editor, high enough up the greasy pole to know that when you start to slide the slipway heads to the exit.”

He said he had collected his share of scars, mostly mental. “Others paid more dearly. I remember well the friends I lost unnecessarily - Taras Protsyuk and Kurt Schork - and others such as Hugh Pain and Corinne Dufka, who limped away to testify to the riskiness of reporting.”

Maguire said every generation of journalists thinks it is the pinnacle of the profession. “But I’ve seen enough departures to know organisations endure, regardless of who leaves them, and that new blood is what keeps an editorial organism healthy. What survives are the values at the core of what Reuters does - fidelity to the truth, bravery in reporting, inspiration in thinking and indomitable enterprise in encounters with the challenges facing our industry.

“It’s not a very complicated set of commandments, but they are hard to live up to.”

Deputy editor-in-chief Paul Ingrassia put Maguire’s departure in the context of editor-in-chief Stephen Adler’s restructuring of editorial. “With Steve’s reorganization and the creation of a network of regional editors reporting to me, Sean felt the moment was ripe to move on.” ■