People Remembered: Frank Devine

Frank Devine, 77, a former foreign correspondent and newspaper andmagazine editor, died in Sydney July 3 after suffering from heart andlung ailments and prostrate cancer.

Frank Devine, 77, a former foreign correspondent and newspaper and magazine editor, died in Sydney July 3 after suffering from heart and lung ailments and prostrate cancer. After reporting for The Australian from New York, London and Tokyo over 10 years, Devine was editor-in-chief of the Australian and New Zealand edition of the Reader’s Digest and an editor of the American Reader’s Digest; editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Post; and then back to The Australian as editor and columnist. His last column was published April 16.

When he was president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Tokyo, 1966 to 1967, Devine told a convention of Japanese newspaper editors and publishers, “We foreign correspondents find that Japanese officials, at most levels, are unwilling to give us information on a continuing day-to-day basis. Worse still, we find that our own professional colleagues, the journalists of Japan, frequently combine to exclude foreign reporters from access to news and news sources.”

Rupert Murdoch, who hired Devine at the Chicago and New York newspapers, said, “I was impressed by Devine’s grasp of journalism and his warm personality.” Peter Coleman, a former opposition leader in New South Wales, described Devine as the “laughing cavalier of Australian journalism. His laughter, often noisy, was always infectious. He was a sports fanatic, a film buff and a stylish writer with a love for words. A bon vivant who loved long lunches, he was a conviction journalist whose religious faith was central to his life. He used to pray privately at work.”

Born in New Zealand, son of a carpenter, Devine started his journalism career at age 17 on The Marlborough Express of New Zealand. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Jacqueline, whom he met when they both were reporters for The West Australian in Perth, and their daughters: Miranda, a columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald; Alexandra, Bloomberg News, Tokyo; and Rosalind, who trained as an artist and now paints part time. She lives in Sydney with her husband and their four children.