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ndonesian journalism lost a veteran figure when Thayeb Ibnu Sabil, formerly a managing editor of this newspaper, died at the age of 77 after a long illness on Sunday morning at Pertamina Hospital. He was buried at Tanah Kusir cemetery later in the afternoon.

Sabil is survived by his two daughters, Meutia Novelia and Helma Hara, his sons-in-law, and four grandchildren. His wife Chamisah died several years ago.

Born on Jan. 8, 1934, in Banda Aceh, Sabil began his journalistic career at national news agency Antara in the early 1960s and built up rich experiences covering news at strikingly different stages of the country’s democracy, initially during the reign of first president Sukarno until 1966, then under strongman Soeharto and then in full-fledged democracy after Soeharto’s fall in May 1998.

He pursued a degree in English at the University of Indonesia but did not complete it.

Sabil was one of the few journalists posted in Irian Jaya (now Papua) immediately after the region was integrated into Indonesia in 1962 through a UN-supervised referendum.

Returning to Jakarta a few years later, Sabil joined The Indonesian Times, one of two English-language dailies in Jakarta in the late 1960s, as a managing editor.

Sabil joined The Jakarta Post when it was first established on April 25, 1983, first as a national news desk editor and later as a managing editor in the early 1990s until 1999. He served as a senior editor and editorial writer for few years before fully retiring.

“Sabil was a true journalist who was dedicated and showed strong loyalty. With him around, I was sure that tomorrow we would have a newspaper that should satisfy the basic requirement of a quality English-language newspaper,” Sabam Siagian, the first chief editor and now a senior editor of the Post, said.

During the early 1980s, it was not easy to produce an English language newspaper with a small staff, especially when the first managing editor suddenly resigned in 1985, Sabam added.

“When I asked the blunt question whether we should continue to publish the paper, I remember Sabil saying very optimistically ‘of course, no problem in publishing the newspaper tomorrow’,” Sabam recounted.

He added that during this critical period, he gathered those he considered he could depend on, including Vincent Lingga, another managing editor, to continue running the show “because as a chief editor I had little to say on day-to-day operations”.

“When editors were considered hard and loud, Pak Sabil was a different breed: firm yet always soft spoken with his reporters. He was good at quietly nurturing and educating young talent. Patient with reporters, his criticism was instructive,” chief editor Meidyatama Suryodiningrat said.

“Pak Sabil helped manage the Post in its transition years from a startup to a reputable media company,” he added. (vin)