Show Producer’s Blog: Anthony Shadid

By ⋅ February 17, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment

I’ve often thought in the past few months that if I could wave a wand and have anything I wanted for our newsroom it would be someone who spoke Arabic. I thought it again last week watching a YouTube video of residents of Homs, Syria purportedly using pigeons to carry messages between neighborhoods cut off by the government assault. I wanted to understand the narration but there was no one to turn to quickly for a translation.

This morning, reading the accolades for Anthony Shadid, the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times correspondent who died of an asthma attack in Syria, I am reminded of how much I trusted his reporting in the region precisely because of his Arabic.

I remember a piece from the early days of the war in Iraq when he was able to pick up that residents of a particular neighborhood were giving one version of events to English-speaking journalists working with translators just ahead of him but singing a different tune among themselves. He hung back and listened and reported a different tale, conscious himself of how valuable his Arabic was in that context.

That sort of treatment made you feel you were getting the real deal when you read Shadid’s version of events. Add to that his devotion to the region, his beautiful (and seemingly effortless) prose, and his wise analysis of complicated, turbulent events, and there was no better correspondent.

Anthony Shadid was a great friend to our show, often going out of his way to make time for an interview with Lisa or Marco. Just last week he apologetically turned us down because he was about to hit the road on what turned out to be his last reporting trip. He said he’d be back in a week.

When he visited us in our Boston studio last September he told Lisa how enormous the Arab Spring story felt. “The feeling I have more often than not is just simply being overwhelmed,” he said.

Discussion

One comment for “Show Producer’s Blog: Anthony Shadid”

  • http://twitter.com/apeavey apeavey

     
    I saw the headline first and immediately thought, “Please don’t let it be Anthony.” But with a last name like Shadid, I feared the worst. Sadly,I was right. I cried this morning as I shared the news with my partner.

    Anthony Shadid was only 43 and yet, he was one of those reporters who seems to have been around forever. He was a year younger than me, but was so much older and wiser.  

    I met Anthony once; maybe twice.  At the time I was working for another public radio program in Boston. Anthony was at the Boston Globe and later the Washington Post. I spoke with him on the phone perhaps a half dozen times asking if he’d be on the program. I don’t remember him ever saying no.  No matter what deadline pressure he was under, he always took the time. He was always patient, kind and nothing seemed to rattle him.

    I’m thinking back to all the journalists I’ve had brief phone conversations with; those who have died since 2001. They all reported from the Middle East, while I’ve been safely ensconced in Boston newsrooms. I’m thinking today of Elizabeth Neuffer, Michael Kelly and Daniel Pearl. And now Anthony Shadid.
        
    I’m wondering why his death has hit me so hard.  
    Maybe it’s because we’re journalists of the same generation.
    Maybe it’s because journalists like Anthony are getting harder and harder to find.

    A colleague of Anthony’s carried his body out of Syria.
    That’s what good journalists do.
    They carry one other, protect and respect one other.
    Few professions share a similar work ethic.
    It’s one of the things I love about my work and it’s one of the things I loved about Anthony.
    He will be missed.
    The load all journalists carry has just gotten heavier.