Bavdak, Reuters desk editor, is leaving

Maureen Bavdak-Sanders, a desk editor at Reuters who has worked for the news agency since 1987, is leaving.

She wrote this to her colleagues:

The Style Guide does not have an entry for “surreal.”

A stream of correspondents and filers from every corner of the globe over the past months have written about their often humble beginnings in the Baron’s newsroom. Many names — bylines that we came to know and rely on — left readers stunned as a calculated few hundred years worth of experience and incredible integrity was signing out.

As I back into the lede of my own WRAPUP — minus bullet points, nonsensical headline or arbitrary descriptives — I will try to stick to the line-count guides of yore.

The background: Assistant Managing Editor Brian Bain hired me in 1987 in New York as a ridiculously over-qualified News Assistant, having already worked in radio and as a network news affiliate TV reporter. It was a time when getting in the door and working your way around and up was the norm. There was no sense of entitlement as seems to be so prevalent today. Reuters had Visnews (remember that?) and had begun working with the “Nightly Business Report.” My experience was put to use training many of our journalists in NY and Washington, D.C., in on-air script writing. A Commodities desk opening led to covering some futures markets for a time, then mortgage-backed securities rates and finally to the General News World Desk. We remember well when it split and a few of us were reassigned to the Reuters Business Report and on to filing. It was a joy writing the weekly RBR New Products column and other features. Our sports desk guys – Larry Fine, Bill Berkrot and Gary Hill – indulged my love of hockey when I tossed a few pieces their way. Special appreciation to Bill for the edit of my Mario Lemieux retirement piece that, with color photo, got bylined front-page sports section play at many major newspapers. Yes, it is framed in black and gold.

I have been lucky enough to have worked for and with a few truly brilliant EICs along the way, who ‘get it’ that effective managing is not about micro-control, but a steady balance of give-and-take. It equals respect. Naming names — the late Keith Leighty, Michael Arkus, Rudi Saks, Ted D’Afflisio and Clive McKeef. The learning curve was rounded out by absorbing knowledge and experience from Brian Williams, Bette O’Connor, Toni Reinhold, Ted Kerr, Judy Schoolman and Martin Langfield, and so many .. not to mention my fellow deskers, including those that rounded out the regular Sunday shifts in London and Washington, making for a well-oiled team. (What DO people do on Sundays out in the world?)

Thank you Dina and Paul for making the four recent weeks filing RAST/gennews memorable … it’s always nice when work is appreciated. Acknowledgement is something that is in short supply these days.

Thanks to the morning filing and coffee crew for being willing taste testers for pretty much anything I baked and carted in … no one got sick, or worse. We have shared music, wit, stories et al just like any dysfunctional family should! To retail beaters Dhanya, Phil and Jessica – you are all very talented, and we all know that. Don’t doubt yourselves.

I could go on long form, but we’re a wire service. So I will lift a quote from our colleague Barry Moody, who wrote that “Reuters is a very special place and its core ideals must be protected and nourished.” That says it simply.