Craig Brown wrote:
>Atlantic Monthly Editor Killed in Iraq
>Michael Kelly Was a Columnist for The Washington Post
>
>By Howard Kurtz
>Washington Post Staff Writer
>Friday, April 4, 2003; 10:48 AM
>
>
>Michael Kelly, the Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large and Washington Post
>columnist who abandoned the safety of editorial offices to cover the war
>in Iraq, has been killed while traveling with the Army's 3rd Infantry
>Division.
>
>Kelly, the first American journalist killed in the war, had also served
>as editor of the New Republic and National Journal. But his decision to
>join up with U.S. forces marked a return to his reporting roots, since
>he covered the first Persian Gulf War as a magazine freelancer and
>turned his observations into a book, "Martyrs' Day." While one
>Australian and two British journalists have been killed covering the
>war, Kelly's death is the first among the 600 correspondents
>participating in the Pentagon's embedding program.
>
>He was quoted in the New York Times just four days ago as saying that he
>and other reporters enlisted in the Pentagon program because "there was
>a real sense after the last gulf war that witness had been lost. The
>people in the military care about that history a great deal, because it
>is their history."
>
>Kelly is credited with revitalizing the respected but sometimes dull
>Atlantic, which won three National Magazine Awards last year and carried
>many high-profile cover stories, including a three-part series on the
>cleanup of the World Trade Center site. He took the reins after
>Washington businessman David Bradley bought the Atlantic from Mort
>Zuckerman in 1999. Kelly stepped down as editor last fall and also
>planned to write a book about the history of the steel industry.
>
>As a columnist, Kelly was a caustic conservative who was merciless in
>his criticism of Bill Clinton and Al Gore and was generally supportive
>of President Bush, especially on foreign policy. In 1997, New Republic
>owner Martin Peretz, a close friend of Gore, fired Kelly as the
>magazine's editor over his continuing attacks on the Clinton
>administration.
>
>Kelly grew up on Capitol Hill, the son of Thomas Kelly, a reporter for
>the now-defunct Washington Daily News. His mother is Marguerite Kelly,
>author of a syndicated column called "Family Almanac."
>
>"I had always wanted to be a newspaper reporter, because I admired him
>most in the world," Kelly once told the Boston Globe about his father.
>"Still do."
>
>Kelly began his career as a reporter at the Cincinnati Post and the
>Baltimore Sun. He later worked for the New York Times and the New
>Yorker.
>
>Kelly's last column was published by The Post yesterday. It began:
>
>"Near the crest of the bridge across the Euphrates that Task Force 3-69
>Armor of the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division seized yesterday
>afternoon was a body that lay twisted from its fall. He had been an old
>man - poor, not a regular soldier - judging from his clothes. He was
>lying on his back, not far from one of several burning skeletons of the
>small trucks that Saddam Hussein's willing and unwilling irregulars
>employed. The tanks and Bradleys and Humvees and bulldozers and rocket
>launchers, and all the rest of the massive stuff that makes up the U.S.
>Army on the march, rumbled past him, pushing on."
>
>C 2003 The Washington Post Company
>
>
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