[Deathwatch] Michael Kelly, reporter, 46

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

U.S. Reporter Michael Kelly Killed in Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Michael Kelly, a former editor-in-chief of The
Atlantic Monthly who was covering the war in Iraq, was killed along
with an American soldier in an accident involving their Humvee military
jeep, magazine staff and U.S. officials said on Friday.

The Atlantic Monthly said Kelly, who was embedded with the U.S. Army's
3rd Infantry Division, died on Thursday night while on assignment for
the magazine in Iraq. He also wrote a weekly syndicated column for The
Washington Post.

"This is the first friend and the best friend I made in journalism,"
David Bradley, the chairman and owner of Atlantic Media, said in a
statement. "In that quarter of the heart, he can't be touched."

The circumstances and cause of the accident were still under
investigation, U.S. defense officials said.

Kelly, who was until recently editor-in-chief at The Atlantic Monthly,
covered the 1991 Gulf War as a freelance correspondent for The New
Republic, GQ, and The Boston Globe.

He won high praise for his reporting on how U.S. funds helped pay to
rebuild lavish palaces of Kuwaiti leaders after the conflict.

Kelly was the fourth journalist killed in action in the two-week-old
war. The four journalists killed in this war now equals the total
number killed 12 years ago in the Gulf War. Two additional journalists
are still missing in Iraq.

BBC cameraman Kaveh Golestan was killed by a land mine as he climbed
out of a car in the northern town of Kifri this week. The first victim,
Australian cameraman Paul Moran, was killed, also in the north, by a
March 23 car bomb Kurdish officials blamed on the militant Islamic
group Ansar al-Islam.

Terry Lloyd, a reporter with Britain's Independent Television News, was
killed after coming under fire on the way to Basra in the south. Two of
his crew are still missing.

Britain's Channel 4 TV reporter Gaby Rado was found dead at an Iraqi
hotel, but his employers said the death appeared to be unconnected to
combat.

There are some 600 journalists who are "embedded" with U.S. and British
forces.

Prior to his arrival at The Atlantic Monthly, Kelly was the editor of
National Journal, from 1998 to 2000, and of The New Republic, from 1996
to 1997. Kelly was survived by his wife, Madelyn, and two sons. 

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Michael Kelly, editor-at-large for The Atlantic
Monthly, was killed while on assignment covering the war in Iraq. He is
the first American journalist to die in the conflict.

Kelly, also an iconoclastic columnist for The Washington Post and a
former editor of The New Republic, died Thursday night while traveling
with the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division as it moved across Iraq,
according to a statement issued by Atlantic Media.

President Bush "expresses his sorrow and his condolences to the Kelly
family," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said.

Atlantic Monthly owner David Bradley said the magazine "has had 145
years of good times and bad, but no moment more deeply sad than this
one now."

The 46-year-old Kelly, who also covered the first Gulf War, is the
fifth journalist to die in the war and the first among the 600 embedded
with U.S. armed forces.

Atlantic Media provided no details about Kelly's death. The Washington
Post, on its Web site, said Kelly was killed in a Humvee accident.

Navy Lt. Herlinda Rojas, a spokeswoman at the Coalition Press
Information Center in Kuwait City, said a soldier and a reporter were
killed near Baghdad when a Humvee went into a canal. Neither were
identified by Rojas. Military officials said they believed it was an
accident and not the result of combat.

Last month, Kelly told ABC News that he did not consider his Iraq
assignment overly dangerous. "There is some element of danger," he
said, "but you're surrounded by an Army, literally, who is going to try
very hard to keep you out of danger."

Kelly's final column for the Post was published Thursday. In it, he
wrote about accompanying an Army task force as it captured a bridge
across the Euphrates River.

"On the western side of the bridge, Lt. Col. Ernest 'Rock' Marcone,
commander of Task Force 3-69, stood in the sand by the side of the
road, smoking a cigar and drinking a cup of coffee," Kelly wrote.
"Marcone's soldiers say he deeply likes to win, and he seemed quietly
happy. ... 'We now hold the critical ground through which the rest of
the division can pass and engage and destroy the Republican Guard,"'
Marcone said.

A native of Washington, D.C., Kelly was the son of two journalists --
Thomas Kelly, a former reporter, and Marguerite Kelly, who writes the
syndicated column, "Family Almanac."

Kelly was fired as editor of The New Republic, a weekly political
journal, in 1997 by owner Martin Peretz, a friend and former teacher of
then-Vice President Al Gore. Peretz objected to what he felt was the
magazine's constant criticism of the Clinton administration, especially
in Kelly's regular column.

Kelly became a columnist for the Post and continued to criticize
Clinton. Around the same time, he was hired as the editor of National
Journal, a weekly magazine that covers the federal government. When the
Journal's owner, David Bradley, bought The Atlantic Monthly in 1999, he
named Kelly editor of the venerable magazine.

Last September, Kelly stepped down from that post and took the title
editor-at-large. He is also chief editorial adviser to the Journal.

Before taking the helm of The New Republic, Kelly was a reporter for
The New York Times and a writer and editor at The New Yorker.

He covered the first Gulf War as a stringer for The Boston Globe, GQ
and The New Republic, as well as the Iraq-Kurdish conflict that
followed it. He won a National Magazine Award and an Overseas Press
Club award for his articles, and later wrote a book based on his
reporting, "Martyr's Day: Chronicle of a Small War."

Kelly is survived by his wife, Madelyn, and two sons, Tom, 6, and Jack,
3.