Gail Alexan­der

In ret­ro­spect she might have sim­ply said she was priv­i­leged to be do­ing some­thing she loved and as T&T has learned over the past 68 years, jour­nal­ist and ed­i­tor-in-chief Therese Mills was a liv­ing leg­end up to the time of her pass­ing who did it well, head and shoul­ders above every­one else.T&T would have known her as the first fe­male ed­i­tor-in-chief (of the Guardian) and lat­er EIC and CEO (of News­day) which she found­ed in 1993 and which has nev­er looked back, be­com­ing a suc­cess sto­ry of note since then.

But in the days when Mills was at the Guardian pri­or to that part of her life, young re­porters knew her in a dif­fer­ent way, as an en­er­getic force–tru­ly em­body­ing the spir­it and let­ter of dy­namism–learn­ing at her el­bow the ins and outs of jour­nal­ism. Al­so, that by­lines cred­it­ing re­porters were earned and not sim­ply as­sumed.

For Mills the stan­dard was a six-month pe­ri­od at least–and a per­fect­ly writ­ten sto­ry–be­fore one's name could de­but in print and the very first sto­ry un­der this writer's by­line, a fea­ture about art, was re­worked twice be­fore it re­ceived the Mills stamp of ap­proval.

Among her lead­er­ship traits was that Mills had pres­ence. Every­one knew when she was in a room. She ex­ud­ed en­er­gy and could make (cor­rect) ed­i­to­r­i­al de­ci­sions in a split sec­ond, News­day's suc­cess bear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny to that. A news­room was alive and kick­ing when she was around and she en­sured every­one felt part of the team. Her young re­porters would al­ways be on the re­ceiv­ing end of tips or hints to­wards shap­ing the per­fect sto­ry and as a writer of chil­dren's short sto­ries her­self, she en­cour­aged cre­ativ­i­ty when she saw it.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers