SAN FRANCISCO — David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose sweeping career as a newspaper reporter and author included coverage of the civil rights struggle in the South and the Vietnam War as well as probing accounts of media barons and sports legends, was killed Monday in a car crash in the Bay Area.
Halberstam, a front-seat passenger in a car that was broadsided, was 73.
Winner of the Pulitzer in 1964 for his Vietnam coverage for the New York Times -- groundbreaking reporting that questioned the nation's ability to win the war and lifted him into the ranks of the country's leading journalists -- Halberstam went on to write 21 books. He was praised Monday by fellow authors and journalists for the scope of his work and the expansiveness of his approach in tackling his topics. They also lauded his courage and integrity.
Halberstam obituary: The obituary of writer David Halberstam in Tuesday's Section A said the first NFL title game televised nationally was the 1958 contest between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. The first nationally televised title game was the 1951 contest between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cleveland Browns.
His 1972 book about the missteps of American leaders in Vietnam, "The Best and the Brightest," became a classic, and the phrase "best and brightest" entered the American lexicon -- albeit without the irony the author intended.
"In an age when journalism was practiced by some very talented people, David stood out as one of the great reporters of his time," said Pulitzer Prize-winning author Neil Sheehan, who was United Press International's Saigon bureau chief when he met Halberstam, then with the New York Times, in the fall of 1962.
"He had tremendous moral and physical courage, which made him such a great foreign correspondent," Sheehan said. "He had an abiding curiosity about everything, and he had an extraordinary energy. David never seemed to get tired, no matter the demands. And his talent grew. He went from daily reporting for the New York Times, first in the Congo and then in Vietnam, to writing a whole series of wonderful books, always based on original reporting."
Sheehan recalled that when the South Vietnamese suffered a major defeat in 1963, both he and Halberstam tried to get out to the battle site to report on what had happened. When the American military denied them a ride out on an airplane, he said, they called the commanding general.
At a briefing the next day, he said, "the briefing officer was a brigadier general who proceeded to scold us for having the temerity to call the commanding general at night to ask for a ride in an airplane."
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