Long-serving Southland Times editor Fred Tulett has died - leaving a legacy of more than 50 years in journalism in which he mentored many top journalists who followed in his footsteps.

Long-serving Southland Times editor Fred Tulett has died - leaving a legacy of more than 50 years in journalism in which he mentored many top journalists who followed in his footsteps.

On Wednesday last week the Southland Times filled its front page with news former editor Fred Tulett had died, aged 77.

News of Fred's death also spilled over onto page two of Southland Times paper last week.

"News of Fred Tulett's death relegated a strong story about the financial struggles of medical trainee interns to page 3. He would have gone crook about that," his Times colleague Michael Fallow noted in a separate obituary - A titan of old-school journalism - published in Stuff's papers last weekend.

Fred had edited the paper for 15 years following stints at Wellington's Dominion, the notorious tabloid Truth and several papers in the UK.

At his funeral in Alexandra, Stuff's chief publishing officer Jo Norris recalled Fred's remarkable scoop about suspected Israeli agents being spirited out of the country after the Christchurch quake in 2011.

Soon after, Fred made headlines himself by personally sampling the synthetic cannabis product Kronic and then calling for it to be banned immediately in his paper's editorial the next day.

But Fred's best-remembered scoop was one that came out of the blue in 1984 when he picked up a ringing phone at the Dominion Sunday Times.

It was Naomi Lange - wife of then PM David Lange - on the line.

This was at a time when their marriage was on the rocks. She spilled the beans to him about David's adultery and Fred put it in the paper - but not before pondering the public interest in the exposure of this.

Almost 20 years later, when Fred was at the Southland Times, the story of an affair involving Auckland mayor Len Brown made nationwide headlines.

But this time the story was being peddled by political opponents of Len Brown who was facing re-election.

At that time Fred Tulett spoke to Mediawatch about whether the public interest would be served by this private situation being revealed in these circumstances.

"Of course, it's our business. We're talking about a high profile politician that people have had to make judgments on in deciding whether or not to vote for him. And this is all about people being able to make informed decisions about what's going on. Let's be realistic about this," Fred told Mediawatch at the time. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details