Anthony Shadid, a University of Wisconsin alum, New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner, died while on a reporting assignment Thursday in Syria.
Shadid, a 43-year-old American of Lebanese descent, died from an apparent asthma attack, according to the New York Times. He is survived by his wife and two daughters.
Tyler Hicks, a Times photographer who was also once arrested with Shadid, was with him and carried his body across the Syrian border to Turkey. Hicks said in the Times Shadid began to show symptoms early Thursday in an allergic reaction to the horses they were riding to travel in a mountainous area.
Shadid earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science at UW in 1990. He also studied Arabic, eventually becoming fluent in the language.
He visited the UW campus over a year ago, giving a day’s worth of talks for students, staff and faculty as well as local reporters and media activists as the keynote speaker at a Journalism Ethics lecture.
“Calling Shadid a ‘prize-winning newspaper correspondent’ is a grand understatement,” School of Journalism Chair Greg Downey said in a statement released Thursday night. He added Shadid donated his time and talents freely whenever he returned to Wisconsin.
In the campus lecture in 2010, which drew more than 150 people, Shadid spoke on his experience reporting in war-torn Iraq and American foreign policy.
“In the end, it’s about stories,” Shadid said in the lecture. “If I’ve learned one thing I think in 15 years of being a foreign correspondent, it’s that only stories really matter.”
According to the Times, Shadid has been reporting in Syria for a week and gathering information on armed resistance to the Syrian government. The exact circumstances and location of his death are unclear.
Shadid earned a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his reporting from the Middle East on the Iraq war in 2010. He was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007 for his coverage of Lebanon and was nominated by the Times for his coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East over the past year.
The Pulitzer Board in 2004 praised Shadid for “his extraordinary ability to capture, at personal peril, the voices and emotions of Iraqis as their country was invaded, their leader toppled and their way of life upended.”
Shadid also worked for the Associated Press, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe in addition to the New York Times. In 2002 while reporting for the Boston Globe, he was shot and wounded in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Shadid, Hicks and two other Times journalists were also arrested and held for six days by pro-government militias in Libya by former dictator Moammar Gadhafi last March.
“Shadid died in the midst of performing his life’s work as a journalist of the highest quality and integrity – thoughtful, serious, important work that I know we are all so very proud of and so very thankful for,” Downey said in the statement. “We will miss him terribly.”
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.
