John Dodd, a master of the wordsmith's art

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jan/06/sun-theobserver

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I commend this affectionate tribute, in the Press Gazette, to the former Daily Herald/Sun journalist John Dodd by his friend and one-time colleague Colin Dunne.

Dodd, who died last month aged 75, was an international reporter for the Herald who covered wars in the Middle East and Pakistan. He also spent part of the 1960s in New York and his report on the funeral of Martin Luther King contained a memorable phrase:

"It was some measure of the man that his final journey was on a humble wooden plantation cart drawn by six mournful mules."

Dunne writes: "Six mournful mules – the other hacks would have given their right arms for a phrase like that."

He quotes John Smith, who covered the funeral for the Daily Mirror, as saying of Dodd: "As a foot soldier in the army of wordsmiths, it was a privilege to have worked alongside a master of the art."

Dodd's talents went largely unrecognised when the Herald, after its transformation into The Sun, was acquired by Rupert Murdoch in 1969. By the time I became the paper's assistant editor in 1981, he was clearly out of sorts with The Sun's less than serious editorial content.

He became a freelance and wrote a humorous courts column for The Observer plus idiosyncratic features for several other papers, including The Independent and the Daily Express.

I particularly remember one excellent polemic in The Observer six years ago, "Now we know bullets are far crueller than dogs", in which he inveighed against the hunting act. Not because he supported hunting, but because he was opposed to it.

He loved cricket and pubs. Dunne writes: "He believed that no self-respecting journalist would be caught at lunchtime without a glass in his hand. From the Cheshire Cheese to the Printers' Pie, that's where you'd find John."

His funeral will take place at 2.30pm on Friday (10 January) at his village church in South Harting, near Petersfield, Hampshire.

<em>Source:</em> Press Gazette

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