Remembering Jim Pringle.

[Carl Robinson]

Now that we know what's happened to our colleague and friend Jim Pringle, I have put together this tribute to the one I knew -- and also recalling that glorious moment of the 2015 Saigon Reunion. 

https://carlrobinson.substack.com/p/he-was-a-classic-foreign-correspondent

Best regards.

[Denis Gray]

Wonderful tribute to Jim. And I am glad you mentioned Milly, a real angel. Best Denis

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Vietnam Old Hacks" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to vietnam-old-ha...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vietnam-old-hacks/CADHX3p%3DtzyWetp6c9%3DLLJWDEfy4ZMUz4j3zxaHSdan5yZXVahw%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Burgess]

What I remember about Jim's journalism is his time in China in 1971 as one of the very first western correspondents there. He reopened the Reuter bureau in Beijing at a time when the country was basically as closed as North Korea is today. I recall checking the Reuter wire every morning hoping for a Pringle byline and usually finding one. Lots of features about a society unknown to the outside world, but also hard news built on shoe-leather reporting. Among his stories was the fall of Lin Biao, for which the first tip was the removal of his portrait from a wall in a department store.

John

---

From: vietnam-...@googlegroups.com <vietnam-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Carl Robinson <robinso...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2026 6:50 AM
To: Vietnam Old Hacks <vietnam-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Remembering Jim Pringle.

 

Now that we know what's happened to our colleague and friend Jim Pringle, I have put together this tribute to the one I knew -- and also recalling that glorious moment of the 2015 Saigon Reunion. 

https://carlrobinson.substack.com/p/he-was-a-classic-foreign-correspondent

Best regards.

[David Burnett]

I barely knew Jamie Pringle, but was always impressed that a very smart man-of-the-world could get by in the diplomatic/news realm with the handle Jamie. (I didnt see him for the last 40+ years so that might have changed.).  I first met him in Saigon, I think he was doing a drop by at the Time Life office at the Continental Palace, and went on to describe his recent trip to Mongolia, a geographic entity which at the time virtually no western journalists had managed to enter, and write about.  And of course the most colorful retelling was of a young Mongolian woman with whom he spent some quality time.  It conjured up a bunch of imagination-driven questions about, indeed, what kind of trip a person could have in Mongolia, what was there to report on, and how would you get the story out.  His easy going manner Im sure put many uptight bureaucrats at ease in a way that most journos would not have done.... and I'm sorry to hear of his passing, since he was certainly one of those people who knew where the news was, how to find it, and how to share it with the rest of the world.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vietnam-old-hacks/PH8PR11MB675478BC3E4CD1E5699FC6EBB8F02%40PH8PR11MB6754.namprd11.prod.outlook.com.

[Mike Morrow]

Well done, Carl. My last memories, and perhaps best, of Jimmy Pringle were also of the 2015 Saigon reunion. An always curious vintner of life, his conversations were relaxed, reflective and peppered with new experiences beyond these that had brought us there. And he wrote so well, especially for someone who wrote so much. Would there be an archive? Mike