End of the old

Media | The death of a journalist marks the close of an era | Marvin Olasky

These days reporters regularly gather to bemoan the demise of old journalism and the rise of the blogs. Future historians will peg last week's death of David Halberstam, 73, in a California car crash, as a signpost of the old era's end.

Halberstam was the first big-time journalist with whom I ever had dinner, in 1969 or 1970 when I was a college student. My fellow leftists and I venerated him for winning a Pulitzer Prize on the back of anti-Vietnam War reporting that had gained the ire of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. As William Prochnau, author of Once Upon a Distant War, later noted, Halberstam in his reporting of those he distrusted "didn't say, 'You're not telling me the truth.' He said, 'You're lying.'"