By The Bulletin Staff - November 30, 2004
Colin, 51, died in Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred hospital after a short illness. As a former production editor of this magazine, he understood better than anyone else the technicalities required to produce each issue. But Colin Climo was also an old-fashioned journalist in the truest and best sense. He knew a news magazine required heart and personality. And so he helped provide them.
Unburdened by a demanding ego, he was a friend, colleague and mentor to many. Several young reporters who have passed through these pages - along with quite a few older ones - owe much to his enthusiasm and curiosity. He generated ideas, patiently helped reporters craft their stories and, just as importantly, listened to them. In return, he asked only that you share his pain over the latest performance of Tottenham Hotspur.
But there was also a stubbornness and unyielding determination about the man, borne out by his remarkable battle for survival over the past three weeks. We weren’t surprised. His last days mirrored his working career. Colin was always the first in and last to leave. He hated The Bulletin to be wrong. He patrolled its pages with unbending vigilance, spotlighting poorly constructed sentences, removing unsightly punctuation and exposing errors that had slipped by the rest of us. He knew a magazine gained its heart in part through the trust of its readers.
Colin was born in New Zealand, a high-quality exporter of journalists (at one stage, he and two other kids who grew up on the same street in Wellington worked together at The Australian Financial Review, where Colin was production editor and renowned for writing crack headlines). After starting as a teenager at a local Hawkes Bay paper, he joined The Dominion before moving to London’s Fleet Street, where he worked at The Sun and The Times. He spent three years in Singapore for the Straits Times before returning to Sydney where, in 1999, he joined The Bulletin, becoming its deputy editor two years ago.
His innate curiosity propelled him toward a broad range of interests. He loved fine food and wine (he had an international reputation as a wine writer) and boasted an appreciative eye for books, film and art. Truly a modern Renaissance Man, he was also an uncanny impersonator of Homer Simpson and could recite the bloodline of the winner of the fifth at Randwick.
We’ll miss him for all those attributes and more, as will his wife, Dael, and son, Luke. The big test for us, though, is ensuring that you the readers don’t notice his absence too much - that somehow we can cover his loss and maintain the exacting standards he set for himself and others. It’ll be quite a job. But Colin Climo was always an excellent teacher. He taught many of us how to give this magazine a heart. Our own may be heavier right now. But we were always listening.
- The Staff
