OBITUARY
Anthony Allison: Wordsmith and water warrior
By David Simmons


Tony Allison drums forward the South China Morning Post crew during the 1987 Hong Kong dragon boat festival.

All successful journalists bring to their field a range of skills, unique to each person, that have little or nothing to do with journalism. Those who make it to the top of their field must acquire yet another skill: to practice and impose the discipline needed to maintain high standards, while holding the respect of staff whose own contribution relies on a wide diversity of talent, interests, demeanor and humor.

This unruly lot do their best for the boss not because he bullies them into it, but because they admire him and accept the standards he sets - and the product reflects those standards.

Those who have worked with Tony Allison, the editor-in-chief of Asia Times Online who died this week aged 59, will quickly recognize him in the above paragraphs. "The solidest guy we'll ever know," one former Asia Times Online business editor said upon hearing the news of his passing. 

For tributes to Tony Allison see here.

Born in Pietermaritzburg in 1953, Anthony Thurlow Allison matriculated from Maritzburg College in the same South African city in 1971 and went on to pursue a law degree. Though he graduated from the University of Natal, also in Pietermaritzburg, with a Bachelor of Laws, he never practiced that profession, moving into journalism instead.

A lover of sports throughout his lifetime, Allison took a job as a sports sub-editor, or copy editor, at The Natal Witness in Pietermaritzburg in the late 1970s. His capabilities were quickly noticed, and he was tasked with a total redesign of the sports section, winning much acclaim.

In 1980, he left The Witness when he landed a post on one of South Africa's major newspapers, the anti-apartheid Rand Daily Mail. From the Mail's sports department, where he also excelled, he moved across to news and quickly rose to the position of deputy chief sub-editor.

Of course, those were turbulent times in South Africa, and the Mail's penchant for embarrassing the government and security forces with reports on the brutality of apartheid brought the wrath of the regime down on its head. Front pages regularly went to press with blank spaces where stories were pulled at the last minute by the security police. Finally, the Mail was unable to absorb its resultant economic losses, and it closed in 1985.

Allison then moved to Hong Kong, where he joined the South China Morning Post. Quickly rising through the ranks again, he was named deputy chief sub-editor, and then assistant editor around 1988, then deputy editor of the Sunday Morning Post.

But all this was just newspaper stuff. To Allison, sport was what was really important.

In South Africa, Allison had twice taken part in the 90-kilometer Comrades Marathon from Durban to Pietermaritzburg, and several times competed in the famed Dusi Canoe Marathon. Actually a kayak race, this runs between those same two cities along the Msunduzi River.

Relocation from the vastness of South Africa to the confines of what was then the British colony of Hong Kong had no effect on Allison's passion for kayaking, and he adapted his paddling skills to dragon boats. A photo of him in one of these iconic Hong Kong boats in 1987 (above) captures him urging on the SCMP team. "This was the team that managed not to come in last in one heat," recalled Allison's longtime friend and colleague Patrick Dunne. "This was a source of great pride. We beat a team of accountants that went off course."

But the pinnacle of Allison's boating accomplishments came a couple of years later, when he was part of a five-man team that set a world record, kayaking non-stop across the South China Sea from Hong Kong to the Philippines, raising money for charity. Around the same time, he inaugurated the Round the Island canoe race in Hong Kong.

Shortly afterward, Allison left Hong Kong for Thailand, the country that was to be his home for the rest of his life.

Initially, he was a senior correspondent at the Bangkok bureau of Asia Magazine. Then in 1995, the Asia Times daily newspaper was founded, and Allison was one of its first hires.

After the ambitious Asia Times project foundered amid the financial crisis of 1997-98, Allison and compatriot Allen Quicke helped to keep the name alive in Asia Times Online. News websites were rare in Asia at the time, but together they took the site from zero to hero, especially in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks in the US, foreseen by Asia Times Online correspondent Pepe Escobar in the August 2001 story Get Osama! Now! Or else ...

Eventually Asia Times Online relocated from Bangkok to the Gulf of Thailand resort town of Hua Hin, where Allison could indulge his passions for sea-canoeing and cycling (little more than a year ago he came second in an arduous cycle race around Hua Hin), along with golfing and soccer with his young son Don. Happy to guide ATol into success after success as second in command to Quicke, he found the top job thrust into his hands upon Quicke's untimely death in August 2010.


Tony Allison in triumphant mode during a 2011
half-marathon race in Hua Hin, Thailand.

Late the following year, fate intervened yet again. Allison, a lover of sport, who took good care of his body into his late 50s, drinking moderately and spurning tobacco, was diagnosed to his great annoyance with a heart ailment. He underwent an operation in early 2012, which initially restored his health, and he was soon back on the soccer field with Don and cycling in the hilly countryside around Hua Hin. But complications set in, and to the horror of his colleagues and many friends, he died on Wednesday, June 20, his wife Janejira at his side.

Tony Allison leaves behind him two sons - Don and, from a previous marriage, Simon Allison, himself a rising star in South African journalism. Just before he was taken seriously ill, Tony had booked time off from Asia Times Online to travel to Africa to witness Simon's marriage to Claire. As the news of Allison's death hit the young couple, they and Don conferred on what to do - should they postpone the wedding and fly immediately to Thailand?

"After much thought, Don, Claire and I have decided to go ahead with the wedding," Simon announced. "We thought a huge party with free-flowing beer would be a fitting tribute."

Jim Pollard, who as a director of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand had helped launch a blood-donation drive in case Tony needed another operation, responded to Simon's comment: "He's got a bit of spunk; good on him."

Indeed. A chip off the old block.

David Simmons is a Canadian journalist based in Bangkok. He worked with Tony Allison at Asia Times Online in the 2000s, and the two men maintained a close friendship.