Looking back, there were a couple of things I overlooked. One is that Leslie holds grudges against people he deems to have crossed him. And because of his superiority complex, Leslie has a disdain for most other journalists. And it was this that was his undoing at The Edge. We were doing well and the EIC job was handed to him on a silver platter. But within weeks, we had a rebellion in the newsroom, and staff who had initially looked forward to having him as EIC could not work with him. He also fought with other heads of department and disrupted the culture of The Edge where teamwork was central.
I have known Leslie Lopez since the early 1990s, when he was starting to make a name for himself as a business journalist. And he was a good journalist, tenacious and a good storyteller. Over the past 30 years, he has worked for international news organisations and, most importantly for a journalist, he has developed a wide range of people as sources.
We became friends — Leslie, Ho Kay Tat and I. And it was based on this friendship and the reputation he had built that I hired him in 2012 to be our editor-in-chief (EIC).
