Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and inaugural Ottaway Professor at New Paltz, Sydney Schanberg, dies

SUNY New Paltz joins the international journalism community in mourning former New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, following his death on July 9, 2016, at the age of 82.

Schanberg was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New Paltz resident. He is perhaps best known for his coverage of Cambodia’s fall to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, a brutal regime whose genocidal methods were exposed thanks in large part to Schanberg’s courageous decision to remain in the nation’s capital as it was overtaken, at great personal risk.

Schanberg’s reporting from his Cambodian experience, including the 1980 New York Times Magazine feature “The Death and Life of Dith Pran,” about the trials of the Cambodian assistant Schanberg had to leave behind (but who eventually escaped), was the inspiration for the 1984 film “The Killing Fields.”

Schanberg also played an important role in the history of journalism instruction at SUNY New Paltz. In 2001 he became the College’s first James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professor of Journalism, following its endowment by James H. Ottaway Jr. and his wife Mary Ottaway.

Schanberg taught a course titled “The News the Press Doesn’t Cover,” and was noted for his willingness to provide individual mentorship to students on projects that fell outside of his own class’s requirements. He was also a frequent speaker at campus lectures and events organized by the journalism program (now the Department of Digital Media & Journalism).

As the first Ottaway Visiting Professor, Schanberg helped establish an annual tradition that has provided incredible opportunities for aspiring journalists at New Paltz to meet and study with 15 established luminaries in the field. Now under the direction of Lisa Phillips, associate professor of journalism, the Ottaway remains the College’s only endowed professorship.

New Paltz alumni and professors remembered Schanberg fondly and with reverence after learning of his death.

“Syd Schanberg was a special person,” said Robert Miraldi, professor emeritus of journalism and former director of the Ottaway Visiting Professorship. “He inspired a generation of journalists with his fierce independence, his quiet courage and his commitment to social justice. When he taught at New Paltz in 2001, he took a class of fledgling journalists and mentored them and inspired them. No one who knew Syd will ever forget him. One of a kind is overused, but that was Schanberg. Journalism will miss him, as will I and all the friends he made in New Paltz.”