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So I stood at the station with a plan and a pocket of poems.
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Archive for April 6th, 2003


Sunday, 6 April 2003

NBC’s David Bloom dies covering Iraq war

I read the above headline from the AP wire and my reaction was simply, "Oh, no."

[Image of David Bloom, with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, reporting for NBC News] Bloom died of a pulmonary embolism that was not (directly) combat-related. According to the Yahoo/AP report, the close-quarter conditions of traveling (immobilized legs) may have been a factor in the clot.

I always liked David Bloom. When I first saw him on TV a few years back, I learned that he was a Pitzer College graduate, and thought the Claremont Colleges connection was pretty cool (even though he was a Pitzer Sagehen, he was still a fellow Sagehen). Last fall he even wore a Pitzer shirt on the air and talked a bit about college as a part of a special college weekend broadcast. Never met him, but he seemed like a genuinely nice guy who was very enthusiastic about his work as well. I hadn’t been watching much war coverage on TV, but I did see some of his reports early on — about a week or two ago. I’ll remember him best as both an NBC News reporter and anchor/substitute anchor for Weekend Today and Today. He was 39, and is survived by his wife and three young daughters.

Bloom is the second U.S. journalist to die in this Iraq war, following Michael Kelly from the Washington Post and the Atlantic Monthly.

[Read more about:
David Bloom’s life and career
Memories and thoughts from the Pitzer College (and Claremont Colleges) community, including notes from Bloom’s friends, former classmates and professors
Newsweek/MSNBC’s David Alter remembers Bloom
Tim Russert and Katie Couric remember Bloom (video)]

Image of David Bloom from nbcmv.com.

Posted at 3:26 pm | Filed under News commentary |