Hastings, who died Tuesday at 33, knew something all journalists should remember: that he worked for his readers, not for his sources.
I’m not the person to write a personal appreciation of Michael Hastings, the 33-year-old investigative journalist who died in a car crash in Los Angeles yesterday. I never met him; I don’t know if he was a good guy, or a bad guy, or both in what ratio. I knew him only as a reader. Ben Smith, who most recently edited him at Buzzfeed, captured what distinguished Hastings in a post yesterday: “Michael Hastings was really only interested in writing stories someone didn’t want him to write — often his subjects; occasionally his editor. While there is no template for a great reporter, he was one for reasons that were intrinsic to who he was: ambitious, skeptical of power and conventional wisdom, and incredibly brave.”
No comments :
Post a Comment