Olga Barbi, in a very real sense, set NEWSWEEK’S standards. Throughout her remarkable career- she arrived only two years after the magazine was founded and she was still working on the day she died-Olga stood for the qualities of accuracy, fairness, hard work and human decency that NEWSWEEK has tried to make its hallmarks. For decades she was head of the magazine’s researchers. She shaped that department with a master sergeant’s toughness and a mother’s loving pride. By her command, any suggestion that an error had crept into NEWSWEEK’S columns–it did occasionally happen–set in motion an elaborate cross-questioning of researchers, writers and correspondents. If a mistake was found to have been made, it was acknowledged in the Letters section and stamped in the official back issues kept in the Library. Only Olga had the power to re-edit the magazine after it was in print.
To this day at NEWSWEEK, in-house queries about possible errors are called “Barbis.” In a way, that’s unfair: she shouldn’t be remembered for the rare breakdowns of a system she created to ensure accuracy. And she will be remembered for much more: her good cheer after late nights of work, her concern for the people in her charge and, not least, her determination to keep busy. After she stepped down as chief of researchers, she went back to being a researcher herself: she watched over the NEWSWEEK columns of Meg Greenfield and George Will for the past 17 years. As Editor-in-Chief Rick Smith wrote last week in a memo to the staff, “Both Meg and George came to treasure her skill, her grace and her friendship-feelings shared by three generations of NEWSWEEK staffers.”
Tyrone Turner, who had been at NEWSWEEK for 12 years, was greatly admired for his sure hand in a critical job: helping to manage the editorial purse strings. Journalists are not renowned for their efficiency in dealing with money, and Tyrone was often called upon to cope with emergencies: a traveling correspondent running short of cash in a faraway country, an editor keen to send reporters winging off to cover a breaking news story. No matter how late the hour or how bizarre the situation, Tyrone was imperturbable. He smoothed over our crises–and helped us live pretty much within our budgets-with all the tact that those tasks especially require. His early, sudden death is a tragic loss. He leaves his wife, Rosalyn, and two sons.
