Peter Mackler: Agence France-Presse moderniser

When Peter Mackler joined the French news agency Agence France-Presse in 1979, he found a sleepy English service based in Paris where translators pounded away on their typewriters refashioning French-language news stories which were sold by subscription to a faithful but select clientele of newspapers and other media outlets. Staff would while away their numerous mandatory breaks in the bistros of the Place de la Bourse.

The fact that AFP is now one of the "big three" global news agencies, alongside Thomson Reuters and Associated Press, is due in no small measure to his own efforts in promoting the expansion of the agency over the three decades that followed.

The name Mackler became the symbol of modernisation that struck terror into many of his French colleagues who feared an "Anglo-Saxon" takeover of the agency. But even for his British and American co-workers, the punishing work ethic of the Brooklyn-born Mackler was a bit of a shock to the system.

In the 1980s, AFP management realised that the company could tap into a whole new revenue stream by competing on a level playing field with the other global agencies – in English. British and American journalists were hired, regional hubs were set up, and reporters sent out to work in their mother tongue. And Mackler was the vehicle for change, when the word came down that AFP had to "adapt or die".

Mackler's legendary energy took him across three continents as he built up the AFP English service, which he had joined from the American news agency UPI. In 1982, he worked with the equally indefatigable Georges Biannic in Hong Kong to turn AFP into Asia's leading news agency, a position it still holds today.

Four years later, he was back in Paris, shaking things up on the English desk. Then came the first Gulf War and he was appointed to oversee coverage – the first Anglophone to have editorial control over French journalists in the field. It was AFP's own Desert Storm. But it was so successful that AFP reporters reached Kuwait City even before the American troops.

Further decentralisation of the English service followed as the hubs were set up to be close to their regional markets, and Mackler was despatched to Washington to set up the Americas desk. But he was not just a talented editor, manager and negotiator. As bureau chief in Sydney and Singapore he had commercial duties. Later on, in Brussels, Paris and Washington, he was back to reporting. I last caught up with him two years ago when Jack Straw was escorting Condoleezza Rice around his Blackburn constituency, and Mackler was part of the US travelling press corps following the American Secretary of State.

He told me about a foundation he had set up – in his spare time of course – to train journalists in developing countries, the Global Media Forum. He was also mentoring the son of a colleague who had died prematurely a few years earlier.

He died as he had lived – he was in the office last Friday when he suffered a massive heart attack. He had been AFP's chief editor for North America in Washington since 2006.

Anne Penketh

Peter Mackler, journalist: born New York 22 August 1949; married 1977 Catherine Antoine (two daughters); died Washington, DC 20 June 2008.