Stephen Thompson R.I.P. 27th July 2008 | 500 Words

Monday, 27 July 2015, 5:31 pm
Column: Alastair Thompson

Six years, 364 days and 23 hours ago it was a cool but clear night in Karori.

After attending mass, my wife and I were approaching the back gate of St Theresa's School when I received a phone call from my mother Margaret Thompson.

Margaret said she had something awful to tell me. I froze.

She then told me my father Stephen had died of a heart attack in Murchison. I screamed.

When a parent dies a child loses part of their sky, I concluded in a column four and half years later.

There will always be a big Stephen Thompson shaped hole in my life, but recounting my grief today is not the objective of this column.

Rather I want to pay a tribute to my living mother Margaret Thompson and to my departed father in the context of "Operation Chrysalis", the transformation process which is nearing completion at Scoop.

For the first nine years of Scoop's life my father Stephen Thompson was its guardian.

For the past seven years my mother Margaret has held the role.

Without them there would be no Scoop.

And when Scoop becomes a not-for-profit news organisation held for benefit of the people of New Zealand - hopefully in September - it will be Margaret gifting the entity known as Scoop into trust.

With the benefit of hindsight it might have been a good decision to give up on the Scoop project after Stephen died.

As all those familiar with the saga will attest, the amount of aggravation Scoop has caused since has been more than enough even for my large and rather aggravation resilient family.

And while Stephen hasn't been here physically for the past seven years his spirit has remained top of mind as Margaret, Wendy and I have dragged Scoop through its late childhood and early teens this past seven years.

Why did he care?

And you might just as well ask, why do we care?

Stephen loved that Scoop wasn't afraid to stand up for the little guy, and was able to do so effectively for so many by simply giving them a voice. He loved Scoop because he believed in fairness. Injustice made him angry and he hated bullying of all kinds. And Stephen was a loyal to a fault.

Shortly Scoop will be revealing the final phase of "Operation Chrysalis". If all goes according to plan Stephen and Margaret's Scoop will soon be a communications platform that belongs to all of us.

As I write this I am certain Stephen would be very happy about the plan for "New Scoop" as we are now calling it.

He would be pleased Scoop remains standing as news media everywhere is failing, 18 months after we faced probably our biggest ever challenge in January 2015.

He would be pleased Scoop has discovered its crowd and found a receptive community of interest with open hearts and minds.

And he would be pleased that Margaret and Wendy and I are now moving on.

- By Alastair Thompson, 500 Words, Monday, 27 July 2015 5pm.

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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