FOR PRESS GAZETTE
DRAFT ITEM ABOUT JOURNO-REUNIONS.COM
Jon: Note pic and story of the Kelvin MacKenzie group in your issue of May 15, 1995 (page 17). Hope you have a good archive ! You had my original of the pic.
Feedback from former colleagues, as well as students on his courses more than 30 years ago, has prompted Jim Brennan to add a new page, journo-reunions.com, to his online Global Journalism Review.
His first effort produced a picture of Kelvin MacKenzie (destined to become editor of the Sun), Mike Wooldridge (now BBC diplomatic corr), Peter Birkett, David Mertens and other classmates at Harlow, where Brennan began running courses in 1964. They were being addressed by Mike Randall, of the Daily Mail, one of a string of visiting editors roped in to stoke ambitions.
That attempted get-together failed because they were all still too busy being successful to think about reunions. He is now responding to emails from former foreign correspondents and others who are keen to get in touch with old mates, and is putting their names and contact addresses on his site.
Apart from his five years of teaching, Brennan, now 81, worked at the People, Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, and Press Gazette before becoming a freelance at 65, and has several contacts books. Anyone interested in organising a reunion, anywhere in the world, can now publicise it on www.globaljreview.btinternet.co.uk/journo-reunions.com
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Jon: I've included Press Gazette because I did a lot of work for you for about two years after you took over The Media Reporter ! I made more contacts then. But delete it if you think it invalid in this context.