When English journalist David Short was contributing to VideoAge Daily at MIP-TV and MIPCOM in the early 2000s, he’d be the first to arrive at the 7:00 a.m. editorial briefings.
Only years later did all of us at VideoAge learn that the reason for that punctuality wasn’t a wake-up call at the crack of dawn, but that he tended to come straight to the meeting from a night of partying! Indeed, it seemed that only rarely did sleep interfere with his revelry, writing, drinking, and eating.
It was almost like sleep wasn’t good for him. So it is paradoxical that on Monday, January 14, he died peacefully in his sleep at his sister’s house in South Shields (his birthplace, located in northeastern England), at the age of 65.
Short’s journalistic career started in 1994 in London when he took a job as Media Editor of The European, Europe’s first national newspaper (which was founded by Robert Maxwell). Before that, he worked for another media organization — London’s EMAP — but on the business side, where he was in charge of finances, as well as planning its magazine division.
When The European folded in 1998, Short moved to Bucharest to launch the financial newspaper Ziarul Financiar on behalf of a Romanian media group.
Before becoming a United Nations spokesperson in strife-torn African countries in the early aughts, he worked as a freelance journalist for 16 publications, including Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, and VideoAge. Short’s last assignment for VideoAge was in 2008.
His most recent appointment was with the African Development Bank, first at its headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, and later in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
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