Enduring memories of lost comrades-in-arms

Last week I lost another former colleague, one who contributed so much to his adopted land.

Rod Oram was an outstanding business and environmental journalist who taught many of us about the consequences of climate change.

His death while cycling in Auckland’s Ambury Park was widely reported and well-deserved tributes flowed. Fellow Newsroom journalist Tim Murphy said: “His ambitious, high-calibre journalism set the new business section [of the New Zealand Herald] apart and in some ways changed the face of corporate and economic reporting in that era.” I agree. I was immensely proud of what Rod and his Business Herald staff accomplished when I was the paper’s editor.

I also agree with what many said elsewhere in recognition of his contributions to the environment and sustainability.

Rod was a kind and generous man and his name will live in the memories of all of us who worked with him or engaged with him in the course of a hugely productive career. His enduring legacy will be in the people he persuaded to think about sustainability and the impact of humanity on an age where our presence is so significant it has been named after us ­– the Anthropocene.

After I had recovered from the initial shock of the news of the death of someone who had positively radiated good health, I began to reflect on legacy.

In the course of almost 60 years in and around journalism I have served alongside more than a few comrades-in-arms. Enough, I would imagine, to fill a good-sized combat regiment or two. Too many of them are no longer alive.

A very small number of the departed have had their names go down in history. People like Pat Booth, who championed the cause of Arthur Allan Thomas and worked doggedly until his double murder conviction was overturned. And Sir Terry McLean, whose 32 books on rugby defined a sporting age.

Others have their endeavours preserved for future generations. Thanks to Ian Grant’s establishment of the Cartoon Archive, the work of the Herald’s Sir Gordon Minhinnick, and the Auckland Star’s Neil Lonsdale have been preserved for future generations. So, too, have the cartoons of their still-living successors.

Still others have works that stick in the public memory, but the names of the creators do not. I’m thinking here of photographers in particular. The pictorial history of New Zealand is festooned with images that first appeared in the nation’s newspapers. With rare exceptions the names of those who captured the moment are lost to us.

Similarly, in the age before bylines appeared, newsgathering and writing was largely shrouded in anonymity. ‘Staff reporter’ was as close as anyone came to fame.

Then columnists began to see their names in print and, before the twentieth century played out, bylines on news stories and photographs became commonplace.

When I began my career on the Auckland Star, columnists such as Noel Holmes, Robert Gilmore and Michael Brett had become household names – at least in our circulation area. Things were a little more staid across Queen Street at the New Zealand Herald, where Professor E.M. Blaiklock revealed his classical background and faith opining on what took his fancy under the pseudonym Grammaticus.

I managed to score bylines on feature stories at the Star, but it was not until I moved across the street to the Sunday Herald that bylines appeared regularly on news stories, too.

It was, I think, the influence of radio and television that led to identity in published journalism. Recognition gave way to celebrity when ego joined ability – and the result was Paul Holmes. For a while I supervised a column he wrote for the Herald – our celebrity columnist. Now he is gone, and with each succeeding year, there are fewer members of the population who recall his work.

If such fame is ephemeral, newspaper bylines are momentary: Read it and forget it. Only a favoured few gain ongoing public recognition. Sport and politics probably account for the highest levels of recognition, and specialist writers attract their own followings.

I can think of numerous fine journalists and photographers who retired with their names relatively well-known, only to have their professional identity fade over time. When they left life’s newsroom, the memory of their professional contributions resided largely with those who had worked alongside them.

And behind every platoon of bylined workers there was a full company of people who got no public recognition. Writers and photographers were the visible part of a news operation, but they could not function without the editorial and production structures that sat behind them.

So, I think of the countless newsdesk and picture desk staff, sub-editors, graphics and digital desks, and administrative staff without whom a reporter’s work would be no more than a personal note, and a photographer’s images would stay in the camera.

I recall mentioning at the funeral of a former news editor – who had come up through the sub-editing ranks – that he may never have had a byline in the paper on which he had worked for decades. For such people there is no public recognition of the part they played in bringing the day’s news to the readers. Their legacy was embedded but unrecognised.

The same goes for editors. In my career I worked under six of them and I doubt that many still reside in the public memory. They were Geoffrey Upton, Ross Sayers, Bob Anderson, John Hardingham, Allan Cole, and Peter Scherer. If you did a street straw poll, how many members of the public would recall them? Yet each contributed to the society in which we live.

None, of course, sought enduring fame. Indeed, I don’t know of anyone who entered the news game for that purpose. The outdated adage: “Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish wrapper” was writ large in the training room of every publication. What we did was seen as ephemeral. If it was the first draft of history, it would be used then discarded in favour of a later version of events.

Rod Oram was one of the lucky few whose career took him in directions where his enquiring mind and his wisdom will have long-lasting effects.

Me? Well, when the time comes to put my last edition to bed, I have a horrible feeling the lasting memory will be the photograph at the top of this column. For the record, it illustrated a story I wrote for the Sunday Herald about impoverished pensioners resorting to eating dog food. This was no staged photo. I had to put it to the taste test, and it was disgusting. So I would be eternally grateful if someone would add a caption: “He was prepared to go the extra distance for a story”.