18 Facts About Sydney Schanberg

Sydney Hillel Schanberg was an American journalist who was best known for his coverage of the war in Cambodia.

Sydney Schanberg was the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two George Polk awards, two Overseas Press Club awards, and the Sigma Delta Chi prize for distinguished journalism.

Sydney Schanberg was born to a Jewish family in Clinton, Massachusetts, the son of Freda and Louis Schanberg, a grocery store owner.

Sydney Schanberg joined The New York Times as a journalist in 1959.

Sydney Schanberg spent much of the early 1970s in Southeast Asia as a correspondent for the Times.

Sydney Schanberg was one of the few American journalists to remain behind in Phnom Penh after the city fell.

Sydney Schanberg won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his Cambodia coverage.

The book inspired the 1984 film The Killing Fields in which Sydney Schanberg was played by Sam Waterston.

Sydney Schanberg served as the Times metropolitan editor before joining the editorial pages as a columnist specializing in the New York metropolitan area in 1981.

In September 1985, Sydney Schanberg's column was cancelled by Rosenthal after he criticized the paper's coverage of the Westway highway development.

Sydney Schanberg refused a proposed writer-at-large post at The New York Times Magazine and resigned from the Times.

Between 1986 and 1995, Sydney Schanberg was an associate editor and columnist for Newsday.

Sydney Schanberg published many articles on the subject and outlined reasons why no POWs were ever found, alleging that government officials never seriously investigated reports of live POWs due to fear of public outrage, and to save embarrassment and prevent damage to their reputations and careers.

Sydney Schanberg further said in his articles that the Vietnamese never admitted to holding prisoners in order to be accepted by the international community, and that they initially tried to ransom them for reparations once the war ended.

In 1992, Sydney Schanberg received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.

Sydney Schanberg settled in exurban New Paltz, New York after serving as the inaugural James H Ottaway Sr.

In 2006, Sydney Schanberg resigned from The Village Voice in protest over the editorial, political and personnel changes made by the new publisher, New Times Media.

Sydney Schanberg died on July 9,2016, after suffering a heart attack in the previous week.