Kelly, Michael

▪ 2004

      American journalist (b. March 17, 1957, Washington, D.C.—d. April 3, 2003, south of Baghdad, Iraq), was a fierce and courageous reporter, editor, and columnist. Kelly's reporting and investigative work at various publications had earned him positive notice by the time he persuaded The New Republic to send him as a freelance journalist to cover the Persian Gulf War in 1991. His dispatches won an Overseas Press Award and a National Magazine Award for reporting, and the book of his collected war writing, Martyr's Day: Chronicles of a Small War (1993), won the PEN/Martha Allbrand Award. In 1992 he became a reporter for the New York Times, and in 1994 he wrote from Washington for The New Yorker magazine. He was ferociously opposed to the administration of Pres. Bill Clinton, and his columns exuberantly expressed that opposition. He became editor of The New Republic in 1996, but, as he did not moderate or mute his views, he lasted less than a year at the post. Kelly then became editor of The Atlantic magazine, improving and broadening the publication, which won three National Magazine Awards under his tenure (1999–2002). In order to return to reporting, he became editor at large in 2002, and he returned to the Persian Gulf to report on the U.S.-led war in Iraq, this time embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army; he was the first American journalist killed in the war.

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