Grande dame of TT journalism

Those Express journalists discussing the news began bantering questions like tennis balls: Is it true? Why? What can she be thinking? Will it work?” “Well, it’s Therese Mills,” Keith said. “But no third daily newspaper has ever survived,” someone pointed out. Everyone nodded, the circle broke up and journalists, still sporting worried faces, returned to tapping out their stories.

I can still feel the chill that settled on the Express newsroom on that day in 1993. It all comes flooding back as I sit here reading Byline: The Memoirs of Therese Mills, compiled and edited by Mills’ daughter, Suzanne, who has followed in her mother’s journalistic footsteps.

Newsday did more than survive.

It flourished with Mills at the helm.

I never met Mills, but I understood how her presence defined journalism in Trinidad and Tobago. For me, her reputation as an editor loomed large.

The fledgling newspaper Mills nurtured in the last act of her successful career reflected much about Mills professionally, most importantly her ability to remain relevant through decades of journalism.

Journalistic longevity was no easy feat for a journalist who had to straddle both colonialism and independence.

Neither political state is particularly conducive to freedom of the press, but Mills defied the odds. It turned out that Mills had a penchant for identifying captivating angles for news stories, and she produced a newspaper that truly could be considered a package of news and features filled with surprises, shocking revelations, and revealing insights into Trinidad society — especially crime.

Mills devoted her life to journalism, running Newsday well into her 80s; so it would seem she would have had no time to pen her memoirs.

Surprisingly, she did find the time, and although unfinished, readers will certainly realise Byline is a treat.

If I had to choose the most interesting point I learned about Mills as a journalist and a person in Byline, I would say it had to be her bold experiment with producing a newspaper that highlighted good news and her remarkably brave decision to go to the other extreme when she realised — or perhaps proved is the better word — that good news doesn’t sell. It is not easy to sacrifice an ideal or change directions, but Mills did. In her own indelible style, she redefined the face of journalism.

Granted, it was a bloody face, with a battered body, but as Mills rightfully justified, she was merely reflecting the face of the country that had become increasingly defined by violence and crime. She faced political challenges with poise and power.

Byline would be considered unfinished had it not been for the foresight of Suzanne Mills. In Mills’ memoirs, Suzanne includes a biographical piece about her mother along with interviews and reminiscences by journalists — all male — who worked for Mills. The result is an extraordinary glimpse of Therese Mills the person defined by her journalism.

Part of that picture happens to be painted by the journalists she nurtured and inspired. In the end, Suzanne has produced a lasting tribute to an iconoclast who stood for freedom of the press in every way imaginable.

Byline transcends the genres of memoir and journalism. It’s a slice of history; a literary experience that offers invaluable lessons about writing.

But that’s another story I’ll address in my Monday book column in the features section.