I found out last night after getting home for dinner that one of my heroes, Pulitzer-prize winner David Halberstam had been killed in a car accident. I was a huge fan of his writing and approach to journalism and he, probably more than any other public figure, made me want to become a journalist and writer. In High School and college, I devoured "The Fifties", "The Best and the Brightest", "War in a Time of Peace", "The Powers That Be" and many other of his brilliant works.
There were a couple of things that drew me to Halberstam. First, he didn't hit the reader over the head with what he thought was the significance or problem with various world events or leaders - rather, using rigorous reporting and research, he drew a compelling picture for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. He was less of a polemicist about matters of war and peace, civil rights or foreign policy in general, but rather more of a meticulous fact-gatherer and compiler of statements made by the men and women who shaped the path of modern history.
Second, his work and approach embodied to me the noble calling of journalism as a watchdog for the public interest: To afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. He didn't take history as a fixed narrative but rather cast it in a new framework. He was opposed to the Vietnam War, as were many of his colleagues, but rather than just pennin an angry call for protest, he documented the lies, incompetence and vanity that led to the spectacular failure in America's foreign policy and the deaths of hundreds of thousands (or millions if you look to Cambodia's killing fields).
And that is what good journalism should be: Not just to advocate, not just to inform, not just to document, but to explain things in a way that future generations can learn from this country's successes and failures (and hopefully not repeat the former).
Finally, Halberstam was just a damn good, entertaining writer. I had next to no interest in Michael Jordan or his life, but I remember being stuck in an airport back in 2000 and picking up his book "Playing for Keeps". He managed to write a truly compelling narrative about this man, exploring his contributions and contradictions, in a way that would be engaging for a casual sports fan.
According to the Times, he was working on a new book on the Korean War that was to be published this Fall. I'm sure it would have been a fascinating read. One complaint I do have is that he seemed totally disengaged in the ongoing crisis of the Iraq War, the biggest policy disaster of this decade (so far). If he has written on the topic, feel free to correct me, but to my knowledge he didn't really break any scoops in this area. Perhaps he was tired of covering wars, which he had been doing for the past four decades, and just didn't have it in him to deal with such depressing matters.
The Times has a great quote on his view of what he saw his job as: "A writer should be like a playwright — putting people on stage, putting ideas on stage, making the reader become the audience,”
Update:: Todd Gitlin has some good Halberstam quotes on Vietnam, Iraq and having your patriotism questioned by the President here.
Update #2 (7/13): Apparently, Halberstam had penned an article on the Bush administration's failed Iraq policy for Vanity Fair; see this post from IraqSlogger for the details.
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