Warren Berryman, managing editor and co-founder of the Independent Business Weekly died this morning from complications arising from cancer.
Warren was one of those rare people you meet in life who make an indelible mark. He lived life with gusto, took a lot of risks and was always willing to spare time for a “yarn”, usually accompanied by a beer, or wine, or maybe a gin. At the Indy Warren, or Wog as he was known to friends, created a place where journalists could do good work, where they had both the freedom and backing to stir things up. It was and is a challenging place, and a lot of very good journos have benefited from their time there and their time with Warren.
I was there for just under a year and usually caught up with Warren (I couldn’t bring myself to call him Wog until a trip over in November, just before he was taken ill) on my trips home. It was always a highlight, full of mischief and gossip.
The Warren I knew was at his best on deadline. Deadline at the Indy is on Tuesday nights. To get the paper out, printed and distributed nationally that deadline is absolute. It can’t be shifted by more than about half an hour and most of the best stories were written right at the end, often by Warren’s great love Jenni McManus.
Early in the day there would be an editorial meeting, led by Jenni, to decide what was in, what was in the pipeline and what would hit the front page. Then everyone would knuckle down to squeeze out the last few and usually most important stories. Jenni in particular would disappear and rattle off a couple of killers that would usually lead the paper. For me and most others it was mainly about winning the second lead.
Warren would often be grumpy early in the day, concerned about putting out the best possible edition of the paper and breaking stories that you would see, to his glee, in the Herald on Thursday or even later. He'd be in his office subbing most of the day and sometimes he'd call you in to watch what he did to your stories.
It was a learning experience.
"There's two words you won't see in my paper, Rob," he'd say. " 'That' and 'fuck'."
Then he'd think for a minute: "Actually, you might get 'fuck' in."
As the day wore on Wog would lighten up and as the focus moved away from writing and onto production he would sit down at one of the Macs and start to pump out pages, singing bawdy songs and reciting rude rhymes as he went with a coffee mug of wine by his mouse.
The fridge at the Indy was always full and mostly the staff and various drop-ins would sit around helping themselves, brainstorming headlines while the last couple of pages were finished. Everyone would sit around and imbibe for some time after the paper was sent or maybe head down to our local, The Rose and Crown.
Then Jenni and Warren would wander off to the ferry, arm in arm as always.
The next day we’d find out whether we’d done good or not. Warren would come in and slam the Herald down if they’d gotten any of our major stories, but mostly he was happy. Mostly we found stuff that the other papers didn’t.
My last trip over, for my own sister’s funeral from the same cancer Warren contracted, was in January. During that trip and feeling very fragile already I heard Wog had been diagnosed. So I wandered downtown for one more Indy deadline. Nothing had changed, everyone was sitting around, beers in hand and planning where to go next. Warren just looked a bit thinner, that’s all. We said our goodbyes as men do: fumbling, with few words.
As the doctor said to my sister Ann, it’s a hell of a way to lose weight.
Warren’s career as a journo was full of highlights, but one of his best known solo coups was to get his hands on a draft copy of a credit rating assessment of New Zealand in Muldoon’s time and confront him with it. Usually the government had a chance to edit these before release.
Taking on Muldoon was not something for the faint-hearted, and Warren showed real courage time and again, especially in supporting Jenni’s dogged pursuit of the Winebox scandal. His support of his journos when they were up against it was also a legend.
Where other papers let stories drop or fade away, the Indy followed them and followed them right to the very end. You couldn’t run and you couldn’t hide.
Wog was a great writer on matters of freedom, in fact if there is one word that characterises the man “freedom” is it. He fought hard for it, writing eloquently especially on matters of freedom of the press. For Warren freedom was about freedom from bureaucratic interference. He’d rail against government meddling and bureaucracy constantly.
We didn’t always see eye to eye on these matters, but it was fun taking him on.
Less well known to many is Warren’s life before journalism, as a paua fisherman (or was that poacher, I was never sure), diver, miner and blaster of the Wellington tunnel, gun runner in the Middle-East running a truckload of weapons to Afghanistan in the 60s and bringing back prized Afghan jackets to swinging London.
Free trade Berryman style.
Somewhere along the line Warren bought a boat, an old wooden World War II minesweeper converted for big game fishing. Apparently at one stage the record for the largest fish caught on rod and reel was caught off this boat. Wog would often come to work with oil under his nails and paint on his hands and at Christmas he and Jenni would sail off up north to do battle with a marlin or two.
In the January of my year there Wog turned up with smoked marlin for all the staff.
“You’re not a catch and release man then, Warren?” I chided.
“Heh, heh. Yup, I am. I catch ‘em and release ‘em into the smokehouse!”
It was delicious. So long Wog.