By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 4, 2003; 12:40 PM
Michael Kelly, 46, 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 in a Humvee accident 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."
