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American journalist and war correspondent Michael Hastings has died in a single vehicle car crash in Los Angeles.

Michael Hastings - Photo credit: Blue Rider Press/Penguin

News of his death was first reported Tuesday evening by the website BuzzFeed, for which Hastings also wrote.

“We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone,” Ben Smith, BuzzFeed editor in chief, said in a statement posted online shortly before 7 p.m.

“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.

“Michael was also a wonderful, generous colleague, a joy to work with and a lover of corgis — especially his Bobby Sneakers,” Smith continued. “Our thoughts are with Elise and the rest of his family and we are going to miss him.”

Hastings, a Vermont native, was a 1998 graduate of Rice Memorial High School in South Burlington.

His reporting on Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the subsequent story in June 2010 led to the commander’s resignation after he was quoted ridiculing President Obama, Vice President Biden and other administration officials. The story was titled “The Runaway General” and resulted from the considerable access to McChrystal and others that Hastings was granted.

“You never know how a story will be received,” Hastings told the Burlington Free Press.
Hastings also published “I Lost My Love in Baghdad,” in 2010, telling the story of being a young war correspondent whose girlfriend dies in Iraq.

Hastings was a regular contributor to Gentlemen’s Quarterly and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine.    He was also a journalist for Newsweek magazine.

USA Today contributed to this report.