George Palmer, who has died in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 92, was a legendary editor of the Financial Mail in its earliest days.
It had a circulation of only about 20000 but the people who read it were South Africa's movers and shakers in the government and business.
It also became required reading among the elite of the anti-apartheid resistance movement on Robben Island. Not only because it was one of the few publications they had access to, but because of its quality and reliability. Palmer assembled a top team, most of them specialists in their fields, and for the most part once stories were approved let them get on with it.
Story proposals were rigorously interrogated and debated at editorial meetings. Of little or no concern was how the government or business might react.
Palmer was a dynamic individual with a low boredom threshold, which was why he left his job as a merchant banker to become a journalist.
Once he decided a story was worth doing he backed his writers all the way.
When his chairman instructed him to spike an article to which a cabinet minister had objected, Palmer ignored him. When the chairman threatened to stop the printing press to stop the article appearing, Palmer instructed his staff to do whatever it took to make sure the FM came out the next day with the offending article intact.
It duly appeared.
Although business reporting was the FM's bread and butter, Palmer understood how interdependent business and politics were, particularly in South Africa.
It wasn't just that he found apartheid morally indefensible: it made no business sense...