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Before Google, there was Ebbin.

Our Newsroom oracle. A walking, talking, often squawking (ever heard her laugh?) treasury of information about all things Bermuda.

Her unmatched local knowledge has suffused her stories with authority and context... and made her fellow scribes lazy. Looking things up or committing facts to memory is so tiresome compared to simply asking Meredith. And much less entertaining.

She's been especially good on the inter-connections between people: the personal and professional histories that help explain their motivations and actions. Don't label her a gossip, though: she lacks the necessary malevolence to delight in other people's falls or foibles. Rather, think of her as a broker of bankable stories, a trusted clearing house of incident and intrigue.

Like all the best reporters, Meredith is good on detail. She has that rare ability to find stories in the most unpromising places. She can turn a dry annual report or a raft of statistics into something lucid and relevant. Or an obscure public notice into a front-page scoop. I swear you could randomly open the phone book on any page and she'd find you a story.

But to what end? What's her legacy? Meredith's not one to publicly ruminate about the philosophical underpinnings or societal impact of good journalism but I think the impetus behind her extraordinary work ethic is quite easy to explain: for three decades, she's been in pursuit of truth. And often in dogged pursuit of those who try to bend it. Truth is rarely clear-cut and sometimes we inadvertently miss the mark. But Meredith's integrity and intrinsic sense of right and wrong - marshalled by a sound but unobtrusive personal philosophy - have brought her closer to truth than most and helped make her the most important Bermudian journalist of her generation. She has excelled at rooting out wrongdoing and exposing charlatans and BS merchants. Bermuda is incalculably better off, thanks not only to her stories but also for the example she has set for other journalists.

And the technique? Well, it's been something to behold.

Impressionable young reporters - and jaded old ones alike - were in luck if they found themselves within earshot of Meredith's desk. In her telephone battles with slippery politicians, reticent civil servants and out-and-out rogues, 'no comment' was never a good enough answer and her fist-in-a-velvet-glove approach - the bite and volume of her cajoling, Bermudian patois rising in inverse proportion to her waning patience - will live long in the memory.

All this on an island where a cult of secrecy pervades almost every aspect of public life. Mercifully, and against the odds, Meredith's sense of humour is undimmed; her inimitable, raucous laugh a vital daily reminder to all of us to keep things in perspective.

Though as well-read and cultured as any journalist you'll meet on these shores, Meredith retained the common touch and has been equally at ease on a complex investigation or a picture story about an MP's wedding. News is about people and Meredith has never lost sight of that fact.

Hungry for news

And somehow, having covered all the major events in Bermuda over the last 30 years, including the 'hardy perennials' - her mildly pejorative shorthand for the cyclical stories about Good Friday kite-making, Club Med schemes, public education woes, questionable arrival figures, 'flu jabs and so on - she has remained as hungry for news as the greenest cub reporter. And crucially, she never made that common error among reporters of allowing her natural sceptism to mutate into cynicism.

At any news organization it's the reporters who really count and for Meredith to have stuck it out in the trenches for so long and with such gusto is truly phenomenal.

She's modest, too. Not perfect, though. She has her flaws just like the rest of us. Though a trailblazer in many positive ways, she also invented 'Bermuda Time' - that is, being 15 minutes late for everything. She thought a deadline was a faulty phone connection. On those rare occasions she shows up on time for anything you can be sure of one thing - there'll be free food.

Which leads us to chronic thriftiness, another of her 'quaint' traits. As a reporter, frugality is as much a necessity as a lifestyle choice but Meredith spun it into an art form. The only thing she doesn't recycle is clichés.

She has her pet peeves. Bad grammar. Mendacious/greedy politicians. False prophets. Useless public servants. PR fluff. Bigotry. Paying gratuities.

Meredith's also a hardcore technophobe. Her dazzlingly cluttered computer desktop looks like an early, failed experiment in

cubism. When that new-fangled thingy called the Internet was born, Meredith was still using a black and white TV.

All these traits converge, of course, to create her uniqueness.

With the exception of a four-year spell when she defected to The Bermudian magazine, I've worked alongside Meredith Ebbin at the Bermuda Sun for 18 years. There's no other journalist, or person, I respect or admire more. And I also feel privileged to call her a pal.

This is not meant to read like Meredith's journalistic obituary - she still has more beans than most reporters half her age and even in retirement she'll contribute the occasional news feature to the Bermuda Sun. But she's done with full-time news reporting. And though it might sound maudlin, the fact is we'll never find anyone quite like her again.

Not even through Google.[[In-content Ad]]

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