Steven Vincent RIP
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 08.03.05 | 8:22 PM ET
It’s hard to imagine just how many writers—journalists, travel writers, poets—have been inspired by Jack Kerouac. It turns out that Steven Vincent, the 49-year-old American freelance journalist shot to death in Iraq on Tuesday, was one of them. The Boston Globe has published a touching AP story about the writer, who was apparently at work on a book about the port city of Basra when he was kidnapped and killed. According to the Globe, Vincent graduated from Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in English. Afterward, in 1980, he hitchhiked to New York, “heeding the siren call of the big city—and my dream to become the next Jack Kerouac,” he once wrote in a bio.
Vincent was filing stories for top publications from Iraq, paying his own travel expenses, moving about the country without security. He wrote a powerful op-ed piece about Iraq in Sunday’s New York Times. In it, he expressed concern about Iraqi police offers in Basra who he observed had strong ties to religious extremists. He worried that off-duty Iraqi officers are allegedly committing assassinations on extremists’ behalf. Now, some believe that op-ed piece angered the wrong people and cost him his life.
In addition to writing magazine and newspaper articles and books, Vincent maintained a weblog. The title of its top post now reads, simply, “Steven Vincent RIP.” As of this writing, readers had posted more than 100 comments to the item. One wrote, “We all benefit from the bravery and dedication of journalists like Mr. Vincent; his death is a blow to everyone who wants to know what’s really happening in Iraq.”
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
