A Journalist Is Slain

21 JUNE 1979 — ABC News Correspondent Bill Stewart had just finished covering the revolution in Iran when he was sent to Nicaragua to cover the Sandinista Revolution. Not long after his arrival, members of Somoza’s National Guard executed Stewart at a road block in Managua. ABC cameraman Jack Clark (sitting on the car above) […]

Continue reading

Sandinistas Fight in Leon

18 JUNE 1979 — Working from a hotel in Managua during the weeks-long insurgency to oust the Somoza dictatorship, I traveled from city to city in Nicaragua, following reports of fighting. In the picture above, Sandinista fighters fire down a street in the city of Leon at National Guard positions. Leon was the scene of […]

Continue reading

Taking Backpack Journalism to the Harvard Club

NEW YORK, 25 June 2009 – I took questions following my presentation on “backpack journalism” at the Harvard Club on W. 44th St. in New York City. I also screened my recent piece, “Afghanistan: The Forgotten War,” which was broadcast last year by NOW on PBS. The event was closed to the public and only […]

Continue reading

The First Deadly Images

7 JUNE 1979 — Before covering the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, I had rarely seen dead people outside of funeral homes — much less made pictures of them. But in the summer of 1979 I made lots of pictures of dead people. I still see some of them today in my mind’s eye. On June […]

Continue reading

AU Student Accepts Award for Backpack Journalism

David Coffey (left) accepts the American University-Associated Press Foreign Internship Award from School of Communication Professor Bill Gentile. Coffey, who is finishing a graduate degree in Journalism at AU, is leaving this week for a three-month internship with the AP in Bangkok, Thailand. AP, the world’s oldest and largest news-gathering organization, has a robust domestic […]

Continue reading

A Backpack Journalist Is Born

It was this time of year three decades ago, in the sweltering heat of a Nicaraguan summer, that I covered conflict for the first time. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) ousted the U.S.-backed family dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in a war that left some 30,000 dead. That’s Somoza above, outside his bunker in Managua, […]

Continue reading

Archives