People take refuge in the French Embassy in Phnom Penh after communist troops seized the city in 1975
When I first read this front-page dispatch by Sydney H. Schanberg of The New York Times in May 1975, I was covering the labor beat for The Philadelphia Inquirer and still honing the most basic tools of reporting and writing for a newspaper. In this piece (“Grief and Animosity in an Embassy Haven”), written after the Khmer Rouge had taken over Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, Schanberg wrote about the agonizing two weeks that he and 800 other foreigners had spent inside the French Embassy, with depleted food supplies, a lack of running water, and uncertainty about their fates. I was awed by the poignancy and the precision of Schanberg’s reporting. A baby was born during his confinement; another baby died. A dozen marriages were performed, primarily to prevent either bride or groom from being banished to the countryside. Military men who had served the Cambodian government were removed from the compound to be executed. I marveled at Schanberg’s courage to remain in Phnom Penh after the rebels had ordered all foreign journalists out of the country. For this piece and others, Schanberg was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1976, a well-deserved recognition for his stellar reporting and writing and the courage to stay with his story.