Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times and French photographer Remi Ochlik have been killed in Homs, Syria. A Reuters story says two other journalists have been wounded: Paul Conroy, a British photographer, and “a female American journalist.” A New York Times story says there are three wounded journalists. The killed and injured were in a house in use as a media center that was hit with rockets, activists in Homs say.
>>The Editor of the Sunday Times: “Marie was an extraordinary figure in the life of The Sunday Times, driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered.”
>>Colvin was interviewed by Anderson Cooper Tuesday, Brian Stelter tweets.
>>Colvin on war reporting: “We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?” | Colvin last week: “Shocked by the news of the death of Anthony Shadid, a brilliant journalist and writer whose work glowed with his humanity and was always so kind and gentle.”
>>Andy Carvin has been tweeting about the deaths from Tripoli: “These reporters and citizen journos muster more bravery in a day than I ever will in a lifetime. I am forever in their debt. #syria #homs”
>>”The best memorial to her would be to renew and expand our commitment to ‘conflict journalism,’ ” writes Charlie Beckett.
• There was a memorial yesterday in Beirut for Anthony Shadid, who died last week in Syria. Family, friends and journalists spoke. “It’s going to be so much emptier without him,” the Washington Post quotes Steve Fainaru saying. “I really will miss him so, so much.” A tribute to Shadid in Oklahoma City is planned for March 3.
More Morning Media Roundup
• Huan Hsu says it’s time to stop using the phrase “a chink in the armor”: “Yes, I know that phrase has no racial connotations, but it uses the same exact word as the racial slur, for God’s sake,” Hsu (with whom I briefly worked at Washington City Paper) writes. He goes on to write about the word’s heavy history and wonders why non-slur but slur-sounding words like “niggardly” have vanished from common use while “chink” persists.
• Jack Shafer says Max Holland‘s book “Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat” “overturns once and for all the romantic, popular interpretation of the Watergate saga of one inside source risking it all to save democracy.”
• WAMU news director Jim Asendio resigned Tuesday. The Washington, D.C., public radio station was mum on why; Asendio told local media blogger DC Porcupine he “objected to working journalists meeting with donors at station-sponsored, donor-only events.” I predict we may hear a little more about this one.
• Today in Philadelphia weirdness: A new suitor, maybe! (He’s also an old one: Raymond Perelman)
• Not entirely unrelated: Should Rep. Chellie Pingree‘s (D-Maine) husband Donald Sussman be a part owner and board member for three Maine papers? “The editorial writers constantly will be in an untenable position and I wish them well with their sleepless nights,” Roger Katz writes in the Bangor Daily News.
• Geoff Dougherty says “many of the Chicago News Cooperative’s wounds were self-inflicted.” But don’t overlook a bigger problem, he writes: Coziness between major donors and the people and institutions journalists are tasked with covering.
