Greg Jensen
Anglophile American who led UPI’S London bureau in the international news agency’s heyday
GREG JENSEN, who has died aged 89, was an American news agency journalist who made London his home, reporting Britain and the world at unbeatable speed and with vivid flashes of colour.
He was London bureau chief of UPI – United Press International – at a time when the international wire services still led the world with breaking news.
To his colleagues Jensen was an inscrutable man of few words, to the point of seeming curmudgeonly. He communicated almost entirely through the medium of print in a tumbling torrent of prose. But he was a kindly man, and a wry humour underpinned his writing.
He was a master at reporting, updating and “re-leading” a big story such as a presidential visit as it happened, usually fixing the tone with a pithy quote by the third paragraph.
“A deadline every minute” was the agency’s motto, because somewhere around the world a client paper was going to press. Thus an urgent breaking story from UPI might have gone through multiple versions before Fleet Street’s finest had scrolled the paper into their typewriters.
Charles Gregory Jensen was born on August 2 1928 in New Hampton, Iowa, into a strict Baptist family and brought up in Benson, Minnesota. After service in the US Army Signals Corps and work for Armed Forces Radio in Japan he graduated in Journalism from the University of Minnesota. There he met his wife Irona. They both worked on the San Francisco Chronicle and married in 1954. They moved to Europe and, after a spell in Madrid, Jensen was hired in 1956 by UP (as it then was) in London.
The Jensens were captivated by Britain’s history, quirky customs, Royal pageantry and eccentricity. But urgent breaking news came first. He soaked up information like a sponge and had a telling eye for detail and a natural sense of rhythm in his prose.
By 1962 he was heading UPI’S European desk. His team included three correspondents who between them had covered every big story in the West since the Wall Street Crash – reporting on Hitler’s Berlin, Stalin’s Russia, the fall of France and the London Blitz.
Marshalling reaction to Kennedy’s assassination was an early challenge. And Jensen was fascinated by the moon landings. He was watching television coverage from London, but his dispatches to the European wire were so fast and vivid that he scooped his own colleagues at Cape Canaveral.
When UPI moved its operation to Brussels in 1972, Jensen became London bureau manager, leading an eclectic team of Vietnam veterans and college men. He was a frugal man, and could be spotted at lunchtime in an old brown mackintosh walking up Fleet Street from Casella’s sandwich bar, reading pulp fiction as he went.
He was a caring editor who nurtured talent, once taking on the print unions to promote a teletype operator who wanted to write; the man went on to become head of UPI’S sports division. He also hired a young Welshman on the basis of a one-paragraph letter. He appreciated brevity.
By 1977, when UPI returned to London, Jensen had relinquished his bureau role. He focused on feature writing and interviews and later became a senior editor. The theatre was a passion and he attended almost every first night in the West End for decades. But he was ever the dispassionate observer in reviews, promoting the verdict of London’s critics rather than his own.
After an Elizabeth Taylor press conference in 1982 he reported: “Five dozen photographers flashed her royal progress. Herded into a downstairs bar at the Palladium theatre were 250 journalists, later to be herded upstairs where another 50 waited on the 35 available chairs. Miss Taylor was terse, gracious and sometimes tart, and in 20 minutes of questions … said nothing she had not said a hundred times before.
“Is her role stretching her? ‘Honey, I’ve been stretching all my life.’”
He also covered Wimbledon for years. One rain-soaked June he wrote: “The forecast was for occasional showers and what the English call ‘sunny intervals’ … but often the beautiful ‘sunny interval’ is wasted while the grass dries.” That meteorological phrase summed up what the Jensens admired about the British – a mild and stoic acceptance of life tempered by quiet optimism.
By the time he retired, UPI was in decline following financial crises and sell-offs. But Jensen kept on working, becoming a mainstay on The Daily Telegraph’s syndication wire. At the same time he carved a new career working for NBC radio.
Work and pleasure overlapped throughout his life. An art gallery, an exhibition and a stopover in a historic pub were a typical day’s agenda. Portobello Road was a favourite haunt and the Jensens furnished their Hammersmith flat with a bohemian selection of old furniture and textiles. They amassed a collection of early 19th-century samplers. They also bought outlandish sweaters at jumble sales. A faint aura of naphthalene surrounded him when he wore them.
For all their love of England, the Jensens eventually bought a flat in Washington, near Arlington cemetery. But for a decade they kept commuting across the Atlantic.
Jensen was devastated by the death of his wife in January 2016, and finally moved back permanently to the US.
He was self-effacing to the last and in accordance with his wishes there was no formal funeral.
Greg Jensen, born August 2 1928, died November 1 2017