Photo: ABC News

Michael T. Kelly, UNH 1979, died in April 2003 while covering the war in Iraq for The Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Post. He was 46 when he was killed in a Humvee accident while traveling with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division near Baghdad. He left his wife, Madelyn, and two young sons, all of whom came to campus in October 2003 for a UNH journalism alumni reunion at which a new scholarship in Kelly’s name was announced. 

A history major before UNH had a journalism major, Kelly took journalism courses, reported for TNH and did a reporting internship at the Beverly Times in Massachusetts (now part of the Salem News, where we still send interns). After graduation, he spent several years in television as a researcher and associate producer for ABC's "Good Morning America." Later he worked as a reporter and feature writer for the Cincinnati Post and Baltimore Sun, and as a freelance writer for GQ, Esquire, Playboy and The Boston Globe. In the first Gulf War, Kelly reported from Kuwait and Iraq as a freelance correspondent for The Boston Globe and The New Republic; his work resulted in a National Magazine Award and an Overseas Press award. The international literary organization PEN honored Kelly's book Martyrs' Day: Chronicle of a Small War as the best first book of nonfiction published in 1993.

Kelly covered the 1992 presidential campaign for The New York Times and then wrote the "Letter from Washington" for The New Yorker for two years. He served as editor in chief of The New Republic and then of the National Journal before becoming the editor of The Atlantic in 1999. He also wrote a nationally syndicated political column. After his death in Iraq, Kelly was named Columnist of the Year by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and won the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism. In October 2003, Kelly's and Pearl's names were added, along with those of Elizabeth Neuffer of The Boston Globe and David Bloom of NBC News, to the National War Correspondents Memorial in Burkittsville, Maryland.

Atlantic Media company has set up a national journalism award honoring a writer or editor whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly’s own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth.” Read about the winners.

You can read some of the many columns written about Mike after his death, as well as a little of Mike’s own writing. 

Read about the national Michael Kelly Award for fearless journalism.

Writing about Michael Kelly

Goodbye to a Friend
by journalism professor Sue Hertz ’78, in the UNH Magazine

Farewell to a great newspaperman, from the Weekly Standard 

Husband. Father. Journalist.
From Slate magazine.

The Best Possible Life.
New York Times column by Maureen Dowd.

A Courageous Man
from the National Review.

Obituary
from the British newspaper The Guardian

The Atlantic Monthly’s statement
on Kelly’s death

A Boston Globe profile of Kelly
when he took over The Atlantic

Writing by Michael Kelly

Kelly's Books

Index of his columns in The Atlantic 

Kelly’s last column from Iraq, dictated by satellite phone and published the day before he died

Not a White-Lights Person
a column about his family

Imaginary headlines for 2003
as Mike imagined them on New Year's Day that year

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About the Michael Kelly Journalism Scholarship at UNH

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