Paul McGeough

From Paul McGEOUGH:

It's always distressing when the crises we read and hear about overseas, follow us home ... this one all the more so because it has taken a lovely young man and an impressive colleagues from the ranks of Australia's foreign correspondents.

I was the editor of the SMH when Morgan decided to jump to the Fin. I remember arm-wrestling with him, his cheeky spirit; that hunger and determination to get the foreign posting. There is so much change in our industry, but at the end of the day we still need adventurous spirits to get out on the ground and bring the stories back.

That was Morgan - he had the Waklkley in his backpack for his work in Australia and his reporting from Indonesia left no doubt that here was a perceptive and impressive young foreign correspondent.

I frequent mosques more often than churches these days. But when I'm in a bad place, my 85-year-old Irish Catholic mother marches off to see her parish priest in Perth, to have a mass said for me and my colleagues - I'm writing from Kabul, so the Afghanistan mass is on Morgan.

Morgan's family - you have my deepest sympathy. He had so much ahead of him ...and you would have enjoyed all of it.

Yours...

Paul McGEOUGH
Chief Correspondent
The Sydney Morning Herald