Maureen O’Gara of Client Server News pays tribute to Tim Palmer, who died this week.
Tim Palmer was rewrite man to my reporter for years and years, first at IDB and then at ComputerGram. I would phone in from wherever I was and tell him what was going on. He would write the story. You gotta trust a guy to let him do that. It was not misplaced. Working with him was like slipping on a glove that was made for you. His accuracy was awesome – which is most fulsome praise indeed for a newspaperman. Through the miles of copy – some of it brilliant, some of it pedestrian, all of it complicated and much of it sensitive – that our partnership produced never once, not once, did he even get so much as the tone or texture of the story wrong. The man had perfect pitch. It’s been a privilege, sir, we shall not see your like again. In the old days, when Tim and I were cub reporters, they used to put the slug -30- centered at the end of a story so the desk and the composition room would know that was it. It seems most appropriate now.
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