Veteran journalist trained others overseas

http://www.miamiherald.com

Saturday, 09.12.09

BY ELINOR J. BRECHER
ebrecher@MiamiHerald.com

Michael Owen Fowler, a veteran lawyer/journalist who left Miami jobs in both fields to elevate his professions' standards worldwide, died Aug. 18 in New Hampshire. He was 67.

His career took him to the farthest corners of the United States -- from Alaska's Anchorage Daily News to several South Florida media outlets -- before he and his wife, the journalist Susan Postlewaite, embraced the ``ex-pat'' life in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Her husband died after suffering complications from routine laparoscopic surgery for gastrointestinal reflux, Postlewaite said.

The couple and daughter Kim, 8, were summering at their home in North Sandwich, N.H., when Fowler took sick. They'd planned a return to Cambodia, where both Fowler and Postlewaite wrote and taught. It's also where they'd adopted their daughter as an infant.

Her husband ``adored'' being a parent, Postlewaite said. ``He read to Kim every single night. His favorite images of her were when she was toddling toward him and sitting on his lap at the computer.''

Fowler was chairing the Cambodian Institute for Media Studies at the time of his death. He'd been involved with professionalizing that country's media and reforming its press laws since the mid-1990s, when ``it was still a war zone,'' Postlewaite said.

``He was attached to the Asia Foundation. It was a wild journalism scene,'' she said. ``There was no regard for truth and there were all kinds of ethical issues. Mike was trying to keep [reporters] from getting arrested and trying to provide them with some standards.''

The two-time Knight Fellow went on to train journalists in Egypt, India, Bulgaria, Rwanda, Afghanistan and Thailand, as well as Cambodia, at times for USAID.

A U.S. Army Reserves veteran, ``Mike'' Fowler began working in South Florida in the late 1970s: UPI, the Miami News and The Miami Herald. He also taught part time at Florida International University.

At the same time, the University of South Florida graduate earned a law degree from the University of Miami School of Law, after which he spent a year with then-State Attorney Janet Reno's office as a prosecutor, and intermittently pursued a criminal-defense practice.

``Mike was a very talented writer, but he was so smart and was fascinated by the law,'' his wife said. ``When he was 39, he decided to fulfill his dream'' and become an attorney.

Fowler and Postlewaite met as professional rivals in Miami, where she worked for The Associated Press. Good-natured competition for stories culminated in a 1984 Key West marriage.

At various times, Fowler taught at the American Universities in Bulgaria and Egypt, served as associate dean for academic affairs at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media in Bangalore, and helped start a journalism program at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In 2007, Fowler helped journalists gear up to cover trials of Khmer Rouge figures for Internews Networks.

``He was really important because during the early to mid-1990s Cambodia's journalism was very young and we strongly needed training to pass on the skills and knowledge to local journalists,'' Moeun Chhean Narridh, director of the Cambodian Institute for Media Studies, told the English-language Cambodia Daily.

Miami political consultant Keith Donner studied with Fowler in the mid-'80s at FIU's fledgling School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

``Mike was this mixture of Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene,'' Donner recalled. ``He was a tall, hulking guy -- about 6-foot-5 -- with a great wit and tremendous intellect,'' as well as a fondness for Scotch and cigarettes -- the latter forsaken 10 years ago.

``He was the coolest guy in a very cool profession.''

Fowler's cremated remains will be buried at a historic New Hampshire cemetery.