The Art of being a journalist

Arthur Spiegelman, a Reuters correspondent and editor for more years than most and one of the agency's classiest writers, is hanging up his hat.

After 42 years of covering events from wars to US presidential campaigns and the latest in the world of show business - and with a couple of uprisings in between - he is going on permanent medical leave. He has suffered from cancer for a number of years.

Spiegelman joined Reuters in London for six months in 1966 from the Bergen Evening Record in Hackensack, New Jersey, but stayed, never inquiring whether the job that was being held open for him at the newspaper was still open. He started on the old Americas desk and then worked in London Bureau before returning to his native United States in 1972 where he was a New York shift editor and later New York correspondent.

In 1985 he stood in as bureau chief in Manila for six months which he counts as one of his most thrilling journalistic experiences. During the past decade, he has been based in Los Angeles as West Coast bureau chief and later global entertainment editor.

The reason he stayed with Reuters all that time was that he kept on meeting "all these nice people", he says.

Bernd Debusmann, one of only two other journalists at Reuters who can boast more than 40 years service, worked closely with Spiegelman as he covered some of the world's top news stories, including the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Moscow in 1988, reporting from Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War in 1990, and running coverage of the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995. He also covered the murder of John Lennon in 1980.

Debusmann writes: "I can think of few journalists - inside and outside Reuters - who can write as beautifully as Arthur. His copy has flair and style, bite, wit and insight. He can produce sparkling prose on virtually any subject. His byline is known by editors around the world, one of whom was so impressed by a particular story that he wrote to Arthur's boss at the time, Evelyn Leopold, to ask "Is Arthur Spiegelman for sale? Would my right arm be payment enough? On the basis of his piece... I'd be prepared to go higher if necessary."

“The phrase "larger than life" comes to mind when one thinks of Arthur. It really fits."

Known for his unfailing sense of humour and incredibly messy desk, Spiegelman covered every US presidential campaign from 1976 to 1996 and was frustrated at having to sit out of the most recent one.

From all his beats and exclusives over the years he remembers most fondly breaking the news that the Soviet Union was going to relax its restrictions on Jewish immigration in the 1980s.

His strangest beat: being told the Syrians had cracked down on a city called Hama in 1982, killing thousands, which he sourced from a revolutionary group after agreeing to be blindfolded and taken in a taxi to a meeting in a secret location.

Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger, who has known Spiegelman for many years, writes: "Arthur could be described as chaos incarnate – his office swamped with piles of books, his filing system personal and eccentric, his appearance that of a stereotypical absent minded professor, his copy littered with typographical errors. Yet out of that chaos came beautiful, clear and ordered journalism, journalism that covered a diverse range of subjects so far-reaching over his four decades that it could put the output of many a small bureau to shame. That journalism, together with Arthur's wonderful, helpful personality shaped the lives and careers and output of many a reporter following in his path."

In recent years Spiegelman ran the Reuters entertainment file from Los Angeles, ensuring quality and depth in a file that left rivals standing. He lists as highlights his interviews with Kirk Douglas (Fred Prouse took the photo in May 2007 at the actor’s home in Beverly Hills), the US comic Don Rickles, and Sophia Loren whose beauty left Arthur uncharacteristically speechless.

"We got half way through the interview and I just could not ask another question as I was so struck by her beauty and she asked if something was wrong. All I could say was: 'You are just too beautiful for words.' She just laughed."

Spiegelman says his most interesting interviewee was the writer Theodor Seuss Geisel, known by his pen name Dr Seuss, who died in 1991. "He was the funniest man I ever met. We sat down and started laughing for about an hour and a half then we stood up, kept laughing, sat down again and laughed for another half an hour."

Global managing editor Betty Wong writes: "It's very easy to pay tribute to a legend at Reuters. What has been harder is seeing fewer Arthur Spiegelman bylines on the news file as of late. And, after all, Art could tell the story of his days at Reuters over the past 40 plus years better than anyone else. His strength in the face of adversity is humbling. He is not shy about talking about his own health but is more interested in what's going on with you and office shenanigans.

"The image I keep in mind is a gathering of Art's fans in New York a couple of years ago. All I had to e-mail was ‘Art will be in town and it would be great if you could come’. A few dozen former and current colleagues converged in Manhattan to see Art and his wife Charlotte, including Brian "Digger" Williams from Athens, and former RAM editors Andy Nibley, Brian Bain, Janie Gabbett and Don Nordberg. Stories and wine flowed and the room seemed lit by the warmth of love for Art."

During a recent creative writing class Stephen James wrote: “A whirlwind of cigarette smoke would precede Arthur into the room. Even when New York City outlawed smoking in offices with more than six people, he argued that his own glassed-off cubicle away from the main newsroom was excluded from the general edict, because he was the only occupant.

“So, his office became a haven for the dwindling number of smokers who would slip in to exchange story ideas or just chat. The sessions would last about five minutes and end with one more butt floating in a half-empty cup of coffee.

“Arthur had looked 63, twenty years ago. He probably looked 63 when he was in college. He always wore a shapeless suit, tie awry around his neck. Balding and tall, but stooped with a shuffling gait, I used to jokingly call him the ‘Wandering Jew’.

“He would laugh and make similar deprecating remarks about himself. ‘Dress British, Think Yiddish’ was one of his keys to success...

“‘Have fun with the writing’ was all the advice he ever gave and it was true, even if your writing will be as old as yesterday's newspaper the next day.”

[Arthur Spiegelman died on 20 December 2008, aged 68.] ■