Every so often, we are all reminded that nothing lasts forever, that there are no certainties apart from death and taxes, as a wise man once said.
On Thursday last week I received news of the demise of a former colleague, the Birmingham Mail’s Mr Staffordshire for 37 years, Jim Guthrie.
Jim was the newspaper trade’s archetypal district man. He forsook the bright lights of Birmingham for Lichfield, where he knew everyone, from the Mayor to the court clerks and the man in the pub.
He was a gentleman, with traditional values, honourable and decent, with a dry sense of fun. He was also a hell of a reporter across nearly five decades.
Jim was a distinguished figure from a golden age in newspapers, when print ruled the roost, and courts and councils were held to account on a daily basis. For various reasons, that era has been consigned to virtual history and the democratic process is much the worse for its passing.
The Internet age has transformed communications from Smethwick to San Francisco, from New York to Nuneaton. It has swept aside other forms of media, creating a 24-7 window on a world which is forever open to all the elements of digital debate, analysis, blogging etc.
But it has also delivered a life-changing jolt to the lives of traditional news-gatherers like Jim who pounded the beat for years in pursuit of a scoop, men and women who took pride in a craft which was as much a vocation as a career.
Jim was not from the Internet age. He was from an era of police, fire and ambulance calls, council meetings, courts, death knocks, tip-offs....the very essence of journalism.
The late Fleet Street reporter Nicholas Tomalin captured that essence better than most when he said in the 60s: “Anyone who has got into the club has no right to complain. His talents are frequently and publicly on display to his colleagues and customers. He needs no formal system of grading, no office politics, to demonstrate how good, or bad, he is. The promotion system in journalism therefore works very simply and very well.
“By and large a News of the World man, or a Farmer and Stockbreeder man, or a Penthouse man, deserves to be where he is.
“If he pretends to be ashamed, it is only because cultural snobbery demand he be so – he is happier, and better suited, than he admits.”
Jim Guthrie was entirely suited to his chosen trade, and it was somehow ironic that news of his death filtered through as Brooks, Coulson and co went on trial for alleged phone-hacking antics.
No verdict has been reached yet, but journalism is on trial here as much as the defendants. Jim, a real journalist for nearly 50 years, would have scoffed at anyone who needed to hack a phone to get a story.
A day after the sad news of Jim Guthrie, another poignant, but much happier, milestone was reached in Midland media circles with the ‘retirement’ of Lois Burley after more than a quarter of a century in PR.
The great and the good of Birmingham media and business circles gathered in the downstairs of San Carlo for a ‘long lunch,’ with the main course finally served at around 5pm.
There were tributes aplenty to a woman who may have occasionally enjoyed living up to the Absolutely Fabulous Patsy and Edina caricature of PR champagne-swillers – but always worked as hard as she played.
Public relations is not journalism in the way that Jim Guthrie, and many others of his generation, understood journalism. It is ‘news’ filtered through a relentlessly commercial prism, often peddled by po-faced practitioners, from appalling Alastair Campbell-types to a few latter-day flunkies in Birmingham who will never know the benefits of a good long lunch.
But Lois Burley was – is – a journalist at heart who could still sniff out a real story even as she was dealing with the never-ending dictates of the most demanding clients. And it was all done in the best possible taste, as Kenny Everett once said.
Like Jim Guthrie, Lois Burley worked her patch tirelessly. She made the effort to understand how people ticked, and never forgot her newspaper roots.
The late, great Auberon Waugh once defined happiness as ‘good food and wine, laughter and friends.’
Lois instinctively understood that truth, and her San Carlo milestone party was a triumphant tribute to the Waugh words of wisdom.
Fortunately for her many friends in the media and business, and the prosperity of the Birmingham restaurant trade, Lois will be back in a new guise. Jim won’t. But both left an indelible mark on the Midlands media landscape for decades.
