Joel Brinkley, the longtime New York Times reporter and editor who taught journalism at Stanford from 2006 to 2013, passed away from pneumonia on Tuesday at Sibley Hospital in Washington, D.C. He was 61.
Brinkley started his career as a reporter for The Associated Press in Charlotte, NC, in 1975. He won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1980 while at the Louisville Courier-Journal for his reporting on the fall of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, before joining the Times’ Washington bureau in 1983. Over 23 years at the Times, Brinkley filled positions including White House correspondent, Jerusalem bureau chief and projects editor.
Brinkley joined Stanford in 2006, serving as the Hearst Visiting Professional in Residence within the Department of Communication for seven years while also writing columns for POLITICO. He left in 2013 to become an advisor to the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction.
Brinkley’s memorial service will take place in Washington on Saturday at 2 p.m. The Department of Communication at Stanford has offered an online memorial page for the late professor.