Remembering a great editor

Andrew Cohen, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, writes Tuesday about former Financial Post executive editor Dalton Robertson and how he made the business newspaper in Canada a great publication.

Robertson died last month at the age of 80.

Cohen wrote, “‘Write me a little jewel,’ he would whisper softly. It was his usual appeal to find eloquence in earnings and poetry in profit. He desperately wanted writing to transcend cliché and move beyond the banality of the business pages of newspapers in the 1980s.

“And so you would leave his bright corner office and return to your little desk. And being young and eager to please, you would start scratching away. And later, much later, when you thought your jewel was cut and polished and brilliant, you would return to the corner office, head down, printout in hand.

“It wasn’t a jewel. It remained dross, which his small, penciled etchings would turn into gold. After all, that is what editors do: they make you look good.”

Read more here.