Only a few days before Bob James died in before Christmas, a couple
of veteran Australian hacks in a Brisbane bar asked me if I knew him.
“Crikey, he’s a bloody legend down here,” they said. I gained new
respect from them when I boasted that I’d been a pupil of his.
Bob’s
WP Weekend Schools were masterclasses in design and subbing, and his
late-night bar sessions were successful in educating many a wouldbe
editor in the black arts of running a newspaper.
He once admonished me for trying to introduce modular layout to the Telegraph & Argus in the mid-1980s.
“Shoulders, man. You need shoulders,”
he told me.
You were right, Bob. The shoulders of giants like you.
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