Reuters Television won a major exclusive when it told British novelist Doris Lessing that she had won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Winners of the prestigious prize are normally aware of their victory by the time reporters reach them to seek their reaction. But in this case, Reuters arrived so rapidly that Lessing had not yet heard that she had won it. It fell to Reuters Consumer Televison Correspondent Matt Cowan and London Cameraman Steve Ager to track her down and fill her in.
Matt broke the news to the writer as she returned home from a shopping trip as Steve filmed the response. The footage was rushed back to central London by motorbike courier and immediately flashed out to more than 1000 television stations around the world that subscribe to Reuters.
It ran in the headlines of BBC news shows in the UK and in bulletins across the rest of Europe, as well as in the U.S. and Asia. It was a clear victory over Reuters' main rivals in the battle for Nobel coverage, APTN
Still pictures taken at the time won wide play in leading newspapers across the globe and the feisty writer's comments added colour to the Reuters text stories that our rivals did not have.
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