The prize-winning author spoke on journalism and history two days before his death in a California car crash on Apr. 23. Here's what he saidWhen WNBC in New York reported Monday night that David Halberstam had died, the shocking news nearly knocked me over. Just this past Saturday, I had seen Halberstam deliver a wise and feisty speech for a conference at the University of California—Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism that I had helped organize as a member of the school's alumni board. And now he was dead, killed in a car crash. I couldn't believe such a strong and towering man had been taken away from us.
Moments later, I realized that this had been the last speech of Halberstam—called the greatest journalist of his generation by Anthony Lewis, a colleague of his at The New York Times—and that the tape I made of his Apr. 21 remarks now had historical significance.
The conference was about the interplay between journalism and history. And the alumni board thought a perfect coda to the day's events would be a keynote speech by Halberstam on the prickly relationship between the two fields. "I have a foot in both camps, and I am accepted by neither," joked Halberstam in his remarks.
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