Journalist, war correspondent and Polk Award winner Michael Hastings died on Tuesday in a car crash in Los Angeles, according to a number of reports.
Hastings, 33, most recently contributed to such publications as Rolling Stone and BuzzFeed.
Just around 7 p.m. Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's editor in chief posted a statement online expressing great sadness for the loss of one of today's most "fearless" and "incredible" journalists, according to USA Today.
"Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians. He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold," read Smith's statement.
Hastings was known for being controversial, especially in June 2010 when his story on Gen. Stanley McChrystal reportedly led to the military leader's resignation after he was quoted making fun of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and other White House officials, accounts the magazine.
The story is one of Hasting's most famous pieces and is entitled "The Runaway General".
Hastings understood his duty as a journalist and even understood his potential "to really piss powerful people off," as he stipulated in an email in January 2012 to BuzzFeed's Smith.
"I'd need a clause somewhere in the contract that says if BuzzFeed fires me for saying or writing something controversial... there will have to be some kind of severance payment," he wrote. "I would need some kind of assurance that BuzzFeed has my back."
In an ode to Hastings, Smith published a piece on Wednesday that shed light on a side of Hastings many never saw; stating that he grappled throughout his career with wanting people around him who cared about him and were as warm and honest as he was.
"Michael cared about friends and was good at making them; it visibly pained him when, late in the 2012 campaign, the reporters around him made little secret of their distrust for him," Smith wrote. "But he also knew what he was there - in Denver, or Paris, or Hollywood - for. He was there to tell his readers what was going on."
Smith also revealed that even those in power, whose political agendas concurrently meant Hastings did not like them back, were just as distraught by his death; one sharing writing to Smith saying: "I was struggling to explain to my wife why the death of Michael Hastings made me sad. He didn't much like me, and I didn't much like him," he wrote to Smith. "But I respected his pluck and his courage, even when I disagreed with him."
Read Ben Smith's ode to him entitled "Missing Michael Hastings" here.
