Another au revoir

Exactly a year ago today, a phone call from London ended my 29-year career on the Daily Telegraph. There was no invitation to head office to discuss impending changes in foreign coverage; nor did my (very new) boss offer to visit me in France, where my work as Paris correspondent had attracted praise, so far as I was aware, from everyone but him. He dispensed with me in a conference call lasting all of about three minutes. A few days later, I wrote this valedictory posting to my Telegraph blog. As I bid au revoir to France to return to my newspaper career a long way away, I mark the anniversary by running that last posting again, here. Virtually all that I said then still applies, though subsequent purges mean that rather fewer friends remain

A few days before the axe fell, I chanced upon an e-mail sent by a reader a year ago, three months before I began writing this blog.

After seeing my report about two teenage girls who had committed suicide together, he wanted to know, as a man who prided himself on a reasonable command of English, what was meant by the story’s references to a blog...

Although my custom is to reply to readers wherever possible, I inexplicably overlooked his message.

In my belated reply, I explained that I, too, had been ignorant of the blogosphere until as recently as late 2004. I think I became acquainted with the concept on learning that Alain Juppé, the former prime minister (let us, for once, dispose of the “disgraced” that normally appears between “the” and “former”) had a blog.

Now, it seems, they’re everywhere. When, the night before last, I set up my own I was astonished that it took only a couple of minutes.

Once upon a time.

As a “veteran of print journalism”, to quote one reference to me, I was probably no less reactionary in my initial thoughts about blogs and blogging than that grumpy reader of mine.

But I have to say, in what I suppose will be my valedictory posting, that my introduction to this brave new world of communication has proved a revelation.

My wife, who knows all about French labour practices, sometimes wondered why on earth I was so willing to extend a working day that already lasted long enough. I imagine the simple answer is that journalists rather like platforms, and this has been a lively and rewarding one.

The secret of deriving pleasure from a bigger workload is not masochism. My approach to blogging was to see it as complementary to my work for the real newspaper rather than whinge about it being complimentary (as in free).

Stories appearing in print could be developed on line. An angle that, for whatever reason, did not fit the published version could be explored here. The views of readers, able to see both, could quickly be expressed and debated. People could have a go at me, but I had every right to bite back.

Unless we meet again at Salut!, I shall miss the regulars who found my postings sufficiently enjoyable, stimulating or absurd to make them want to add their own comments.

These responses often developed into discussions on wholly unrelated topics, most famously when I wrote a brief “apologies for absence” note before going on holiday, only to return to find readers squabbling about the clubbing of baby seals in Newfoundland.

If blogging is, as I believe, a fascinating development in the relationship between journalists and their public, I should acknowledge that some of my public have left the most touching messages on hearing that I was to depart the Telegraph.

Very kind things have been said about my ability to navigate this unfamiliar electronic territory. I even bow out from my corner of that territory with a little silver star; my blog was last week at the top of the Telegraph pole, and not for the first time, for the number of “hits”.

But I still regard myself, above all, as a newspaperman. The Evening Despatch, Northern Echo, Harrow Observer and Daily Telegraph account for 35 of my 39 years in the trade; the other four were spent happily at the Press Association, where young reporters always took delight in ploughing through the pile of provincial papers for evidence that their reports were being reproduced from Plymouth to Aberdeen.

So forgive me if I reserve my warmest thanks for certain people who know me first as a reporter, news desk man and foreign correspondent.

These are the colleagues or bosses, past and present, who judge me predominantly on what I have written for the newspaper.

In France, I have been kept pretty busy with dispatches from the riots, the decline of the Chirac era, the tussle for supremacy between Ségo and Sarko.

But I have also enjoyed bringing readers quirky tales from Brittany and the Dordogne, stories about the French cinema and offbeat notebooks about anything. Interview subjects have ranged from the deadly serious - Daniel Pearl’s widow, and a woman who had seen almost her entire family carted off to jail as terror suspects – to the decidedly less so: French pop singers, a philandering superchef and a wall-scaling stuntman.

I hope I have drawn Telegraph readers into this beautiful but exasperating country whose rulers seem to have little idea of how to rule but, by and large, get away with it.

The bureaucracy can be mind numbing. There are days when you cannot get anything done that involves contact with public services. People promise to ring back and don’t. Everyone complains about his or her lot and everyone knows change must come; it's just that no one wants it to come to them.

Other people are best placed to judge how well I have reported on these contradictions.
There has been a stream of heartwarming e-mails, text messages, phone calls and letters (well, one letter) from people who hold or have held very high office at the Telegraph, and from my pals among reporters, sub-editors and specialists.

Their words enable me to leave with the contented glow of someone whose most valued confrères and consoeurs have not been disappointed by the quality of The Daily Telegraph's coverage of France over the past 26 months.

Colin Berry wants it all to end with a bang. Sorry, but that's not in my nature. You cannot spend half a lifetime at one newspaper, a great newspaper as it happens, and not retain affection for both the publication and the people who are now former colleagues. I wish them, and the Telegraph, well.

Au revoir, as I was saying not far from here a few days ago, et à bientôt.

* Thanks to all readers who have sent their best wishes, whether or not as comments to Salut!, on my new job in Abu Dhabi. I have no intention of closing the site down, though I am not yet sure how it will operate in the next phase.