David Shaw, RIP

Matt Welch | August 2, 2005

The L.A. Times media critic died last night at age 62 of complications from a brain tumor that had been discovered only this May. Since I probably heaped more abuse on him than anyone -- I found him to be the embodiment of much I disagreed with in media criticism and newspaper journalism -- the least I can do is pay tribute to how he also embodied the best of both crafts: Most spectacularly, by painstakingly dissecting the hysterical and damaging media coverage of the McMartin pre-school child-abuse/Satanism trial, for which he won a much-deserved Pulitzer. Shaw would take forever to report a story, and write multi-part series longer than some Tolkein books, but as William Powers recently observed, the results often changed the way we understood journalism (by, for example, demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt the overwhelming biases in newspaper reporting on the abortion debate). Plus, he was a Compton boy who wrote a book about Wilt Chamberlain, which I am happy to own.

LAT obit here.

Comments

|8.2.05 @ 8:11PM|#

Condolences to his family.

Cathy Seipp|8.2.05 @ 8:16PM|#

Nice post, Matt. One odd thing about that LA Times obit, it didn't mention anything about Shaw's life before the Times -- where he grew up, in what sort of family, went to school, worked before he arrived on Spring Street, etc. Usually that's in all obits, because you do want to know...

|8.2.05 @ 8:56PM|#

Good for you, Matt, for taking the high road.

Sean Healy|8.3.05 @ 5:17AM|#

Speaking of the McMartins, it looks like the French could do with a David Shaw.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4697747.stm