Longtime AP correspondent and editor Marcus Eliasson dies at 75

NEW YORK (AP) — International journalist Marcus Eliasson, with his insightful reporting, brilliant prose and skillful editing, is the AP Nearly half a century has passed since the newswire of communications. he was 75 years old.

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, developed pneumonia in a nursing home earlier this week and died in a New York hospital on Friday, his family said.

From Israel and the Six Day War of 1967, to apartheid-era South Africa, to Afghan battlefields, bloody Belfast, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the handover of Hong Kong, and countless other date changes. From lines to stories, Eliasson's eyewitness reports some of the global events that took place in the last decades of the 20th century. And as that century drew to a close, it was Eliasson's touch that ushered in a new one. Welcoming the new millennium in a shimmering tapestry of light and creating ripples around the world." January 1, 2000.

By then, he had retired in 2014 as the New York-based editor of some of his AP's biggest articles and projects, moving into his last position. He is editor-in-chief of an international feature story and a valuable guide to many of his AP reporters around the world.

"Old-fashioned he's gone AP's go-to guy," said his Louis D. Boccardi, former president and CEO of AP. "Even a quick glance at his duties abroad and at home says it all. Marcus was often chosen when there was a demanding mission that required a steady hand."[32]

"Marcus was a brilliant writer and editor, knowledgeable, wise and supportive," said former AP International Editor John Danishewski. Longtime correspondent and AP Global His Executive Claude Arbsen said:

Jack Marcus Eliasson was born on October 19, 1946 to Jewish immigrant parents from Europe and was raised in Bulawayo, Rhodesia. At the age of 20, in Jerusalem, Israel, after a short apprenticeship at a post, Eliasson was sent to his AP bureau in Tel Aviv, where he was used to send messengers and trainee "punchers," or articles. joined as Telex machine operator.

A month later he broke out on June 6, 1967, in the Arab-Israeli conflict known as the Six Day War. When a new employee arrives at work and is chastised for not arriving early, he has to buy emergency food for his mother, dig a backyard bunker, pick up a stranded hitchhiker And so on.

"Don't stand there and talk, boy," growled the old hand. "Write it down."

He did so and launched a illustrious career in the news industry, being promoted to staff his reporter a year later. When asked how he learned to write well, he replied:

Throughout the 1970s, Eliasson's byline covered the Middle East, including terrorist attacks and disruptions in the Israeli government, another Arab-Israeli war, and Anwar Sadat's history-making visit to Jerusalem in 1977. It topped some of the biggest stories.

"Egyptian President Anwar Sadat landed in Israel on a peace mission. The time was 7:59 pm on Saturday, November 19," he reported. "For Israelis, and certainly for Egyptians, it was more amazing than Neil Armstrong's foot touching the moon."

1978, Elia Song was assigned to the AP bureau in Paris and, among other duties, covered the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and led the Islamist revolution in Iran from afar.

Returned to Israel. Later, Eliasson moved to London, where he became a news editor. His astute reporting and masterful prose are sure to impress, whether you're covering the bloodshed of Northern Ireland's "Trouble" or enjoying British eccentrics like William McGonagall, "the world's worst poet." He stood out in one of AP's main "writing bureaus."

"Scotland is proud of its poets. There is no town without statues of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson," writes Eliasson from Dundee. "But when the great McGonagall is mentioned in his homeland, the reaction ranges from fond laughter to painful silence."

He next returned to Israel, Now as bureau chief, he led a staff of award-winning reporters and photojournalists in the 1990s, overseeing a constant stream of news about the intermittent Palestinian uprising. Arab-Israeli peace talks, Israeli political struggles, Saddam Hussein's Scud missile attacks from Iraq. From there, he moved on to his last international assignment, Hong Kong, to cover the 1997 handover of the British colony to Chinese rule and continue his writing.

Over the decades, AP has also tapped into the talent of large, outgoing Israelis with South African accents — high school graduates whose insatiable reading and accumulation of knowledge often surprise their colleagues. — The hottest spots in the world with some of the most important stories of the era for temporary missions in some areas.

He reported from Afghanistan after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and from his hometown in Southern Africa during the height of the anti-apartheid upheaval. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, AP took Eliasson on a journey along the original Iron Curtain borders, interviewing ordinary citizens and producing detailed reports on the meaning of this epic chapter of 20th-century history. I have written.

In 1997, he left Hong Kong to move to his AP headquarters in New York to take up a job as lead editor of features around the world. The recognized master became an understanding mentor to the young foreign correspondent cadres from Beijing. From Berlin to Buenos Aires.

"He was one of the journalism heroes I had as a young writer. A fascinating, unattainable byline," said one of its correspondents, now an AP said Ted Anthony, Director of New Storytelling and Newsroom Innovation at . "After that he became the best editor I have ever had. An amazing combination of encouragement and doer. And dear friend."

When I left my desk for the last time, I could hear applause erupting in the huge AP New York newsroom. "It was a graceful, spontaneous gesture that reminded me once again how lucky I was," he later wrote. "Luckily he was AP."

Eliasson is survived by his wife Eva, daughter Avital, and son David.

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Charles J. Hanley, from 1968 until 2011 he was a writer and editor for the AP.