Writer Schanberg dies; work led to film 'The Killing Fields'
NEW YORK — Sydney Schanberg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times, whose coverage in Cambodia in 1975 inspired the film “The Killing Fields,” has died at 82.
The Times reported Schanberg died Saturday in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The newspaper cited Charles Kaiser, a friend and former Times reporter who said Schanberg had a heart attack on Tuesday.
Schanberg and his assistant, Dith Pran, were captured when Communist guerrillas overran the capital. Schanberg was able to flee, but his assistant was held by the guerrillas. Years later, Pran escaped Cambodia and came to the U.S. His story became the subject of 1984’s “The Killing Fields.”
Schanberg joined The Times in 1959 as a copy boy and remained for 26 years. He later wrote a column for New York Newsday.
