Derek Achong
Senior Reporter
derek.achong@guardian.co.tt
Award-winning journalist John Babb was remembered as an icon of the local media fraternity by his former colleagues and friends who paid tribute following his death yesterday morning.
Babb, 91, started his almost 70-year career at the Port-of-Spain Gazette in 1946 before moving to the T&T Guardian.
In 1968, he took advantage of an immigration recruitment drive by the then-Canadian government and migrated with his wife. Babb initially struggled to find work in his field but eventually got a job at McGraw-Hill, Canada’s largest publishing house.
After three years, Babb returned to Trinidad and the T&T Guardian.
During his time at this newspaper, Babb held the distinction of being the only journalist able to secure exclusive interviews with the country’s first prime minister Dr Eric Williams.
Babb was reportedly offered jobs by Williams several times but repeatedly turned down the offers to maintain his unimpeachable professional integrity.
He eventually retired in 1993 but his time away from the media was short-lived as he joined long-time colleague and friend Therese Mills when she founded the T&T Newsday newspaper that year.
In 1994, Babb was awarded the Hummingbird Medal Silver for his work in journalism and 18 years later, he received the Hummingbird Medal Gold at the 2012 National Awards ceremony.
In a telephone interview yesterday afternoon, former T&T Guardian Sports Editor Valentino Singh said Babb was already an established and decorated journalist who took the time to mentor young journalists like him.
“We young journalists were not let down by that reputation because he was a very mild-mannered man and one who was very approachable. He was always willing to assist you or correct you,” Singh said.
He said while Babb will be most remembered for his contribution to the local media, he was also a pan-aficionado who had a long association with the St James Tripolians Steel Orchestra.
“In the early days of Triploians Steel Orchestra he was very instrumental to its resurgence as a pan round the neck or single pan band,” Singh said.
He noted that Babb continued to serve as a mentor for young journalists even in the twilight of his career.
“In the latter part of his career he saw himself more as a shepherd to help the young people coming into the newsroom,” he said.
Guardian Media’s Deputy Managing Editor Sampson Nanton recounted his experiences with Babb who served as his first news editor when he joined the T&T Newsday in 1997.
“John was one of the most helpful and nurturing journalists I have ever met. He would literally take you from scratch and take the time to sit with you and show you how to write stories,” Nanton said.
He credited Babb for his first overseas assignment, in which he travelled to the United States to cover the opening of a British West Indian Airways (BWIA) office at the John F Kennedy Airport in New York. A senior journalist had been assigned before Babb intervened.
“He said no let Sampson get that experience. It turned out to be my first trip to the United States,” he said.
“He opened doors for a number of journalists and he understood the need for people to grow.”
Nanton said he would remember Babb’s good sense of humour.
“You could go into his office when things were winding down and he would give you many jokes,” he said.
Recently retired T&T Guardian news editor Robert Alonzo said Babb was one of the few journalists who was able to write shorthand.
That now rare skill assisted Babb in providing detailed reports on numerous high-profile trials including drug kingpin Dole Chadee and members of his gang.
“He covered trials word for word. He tried to teach people but they were not really capable of adapting to it,” Alonzo said.
He and Babb often traded stories about their pet parrots and after his parrot escaped his cage, Babb told him how his parrot Fred roamed his yard in Diego Martin freely and never flew away.
“He said he opened the cage and told the parrot if you want to go and don’t come back, go, and the parrot came back,” he said.
Veteran journalist Andy Johnson said he worked with Babb briefly at the T&T Guardian before becoming a competitor after he moved to the T&T Express.
Johnson noted that Babb was highly regarded by some of the sources they shared.
“They always said once you tell John Babb something you can rest assured that it would be reported exactly as you told him,” Johnson said.
In a social media post, former journalist Keith Subero said Babb was his inspiration before he joined the media and that admiration did not waiver when he met Babb at the T&T Guardian.
“Daily, John Babb produced the fastest work and the cleanest copy in the newsroom,” Subero noted.
He recalled that Babb regularly got the newspaper’s front page story and “conducted himself with a bearing and professional style that caused me to model my career after him as a young man.”
Commenting in a report in the T&T Newsday, that paper’s editor-in-chief Camille Moreno described Babb as a “well-loved mentor and father figure to generations of journalists.”
“He was renowned for his coverage of local and global politics, and court reporting, where his shorthand skills made him a legend,” she said.
“He was a fearless, funny, and inspiring person to have known.”
