
It's not always so comfy. The press corps, covering a Prince of Wales visit to Gdansk in 1993, bash copy into those old Tandy computers we all used in those days. L to R: James Hardy (Press Association); Robert Jobson (Daily Express); Gervase Webb; Philip Sherwell (Daily Telegraph); Charles Rae and Richard Pendlebury (Daily Mail). Photo by Martin Keene (PA)
Salut! makes no apology for championing good journalism, especially newspaper journalism, since doing so offers a useful riposte to the dim and ungracious trolls who patrol online news sites in search of some reporter or feature writer to trash.
Gervase Webb is one of our trade's finest practitioners. His work for the London Evening Standard was beautifully written and compelling, two rare qualities when it is remembered that he was often gathering information, and then composing, at speed and in discomfort. He was also, incidentally, good company on the road, a virtue that rose above the often competitive nature of the job.
This week, at Facebook, he gave his friends and former colleagues a reminder of his perceptive and descriptive skills, recalling - better than many could remember the events of a week ago - the occasion he was dispatched to Israel after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago tomorrow (Nov 4 1995). Rabin, then serving his second term as prime minister, was murdered by Yigal Amir, an extreme right-wing Orthodox Jew opposed to the signing of the Oslo Accords, which sought conciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians.
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