89-Year-Old Journalist Signed Onto Facebook

I met Roy Rowan, a 89-year-old Time-Life journalist, at a Reuters event two weeks ago. We set up to meet a week later for an interview so that he can tell me all about the telegraph age of reporting. However, at the end of the day, Rowan signed up for Facebook and joined the latest trend in media.

Another week later, Rowan has reconnected with over 30 friends on the social network, including a former employee he hired nearly 30 years ago. Rowan put up a link http://www.royrowan.com and a fishing photo on the page. One of his Facebook pal calls him "the handsome devil". Within days, he is full-blown on Facebook. But only a week before, it was the same man who told me: "I only write on my computer. I don't download much and I don't enjoy reading online."

You really couldn't blame the old man. When Rowan started his writing career in Shanghai back in 1947 upon bumping into then Time-Life China bureau chief at a jazz bar in Peace Hotel, telegraph was the predominant technology for transmitting stories across the ocean. It took an average two weeks to ship photo negatives back to New York's Time-Life building.

For the next decades, Rowan has remained on the front line of journalism writing about the battles of China's civil war, the Cold War in Europe, and President Ford's (right in the photo) military action to secure release of the Mayaguez, the American cargo ship in 1975.

Until our conversation entered the Internet age, Rowan paused and asked me: "So tell me what you've got out of Facebook?" It didn't take me long to explain what Facebook was and how it works.

"So you are saying Facebook is even quicker to reach out to people than websites?" Rowan asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Then I should sign up." Just like that, Rowan joined the Internet community. To me, the greater joy came from the realization of a fact that it lies in every journalist's heart the desire to keep up with the latest and stay open-minded.

Rowan, "a handsome devil", who is younger than him at heart?

Photo Courtesy of Roy Rowan