Anthony Shadid was a world-renowned reporter who talked to common citizens, an American journalist who respected the culture and language of others, a writer who never preached. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting who died in 2012 at the age of 43, he spent most of his career covering the Middle East. He worked for the Associated Press, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the New York Times. “No one expected the Arab revolts to be a simple march ahead,” he wrote presciently in the Times on November 26, 2011, “but rarely have things seemed so much in flux, with more potential for fragmentation, bloodshed and disarray. While many analysts describe the disturbances as an inevitable reckoning with the legacy of dictatorship, others worry the region may face years of unrest before systems emerge to replace the stagnant, American-backed order that held sway for so long.” Anthony Shadid was a shoe leather reporter in a dangerous line of work. He was reporting for the Times in Syria at the time of his death from an apparent asthma attack and an allergic response to the horses being used to help him and others escape. In 2002, as a correspondent for The Globe, he was shot in the shoulder while reporting in Ramallah, in the West Bank. In 2011 he and three other Times journalists — Lynsey Addario, Stephen Farrell and Tyler Hicks — were kidnapped in Libya, held for six days and beaten before being released, the Times reported. Anthony Shadid was the author of three books that opened the world of the Middle East to outsiders: “Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats and the New Politics of Islam” (2001); “Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War” (2005); and “House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East,” published after his death. He is survived by his wife, two children, a sister and brother, and his parents, Rhonda and Buddy Shadid.
2012 Anthony Shadid
Anthony Shadid / The New York Times