He belonged to what was then considered the aristocracy of American journalism: the “foreign correspondents.” And in this tribe, Jim Hoagland, who died on November 4 in Washington, at the age of 84 after an attack, was a prince.
Time matters. From the early 1960s to the spring of the 2000s, it witnessed the end of the Cold War, when hopes arose, from South Africa to Eastern Europe, for general political liberalization and perhaps a world order inspired by the best of America. These are also pre-social media times, when big newspapers still have weight.
In Washington, Paris, London or Beirut, in those years, the firm Hoagland, at the bottom of an article in Washington PostIt is the guarantee of information extracted from the best sources. It is also the enlightened, calm and elegantly skeptical view of someone familiar with international affairs. His peers aren’t wrong: Jim Hoagland’s modeling career has earned him two Pulitzer Prizes. “In Washington, he was as knowledgeable about foreign policy as Bob Woodward was about domestic policy.”said journalist Philippe Labro, who was a friend.
Born and raised in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Jimmie Lee Hoagland grew up in a land of segregation: “It was a time when it was difficult to believe that things could change. And yet, they have changed. » In 1971, while living in East Africa, a series of articles on South African apartheid earned him his first Pulitzer. Later, when asked which political figure impressed him the most in his entire career, he responded “Nelson Mandela”says Alain Minc, another of his Parisian friends.
Deep ties with France
He enters the Mail in 1966, when the newspaper intended to develop abroad and compete with the New York Times. He was posted to Nairobi, then Beirut and finally Paris. It all started with a CV in the form of an ode to the American social scale. With the help of several foundations, the penniless young man studied at the University of South Carolina, then in New York and spent a season at the University of Aix-Marseille. Then came a job as a junior reporter at Rock Hill Evening Newsthen two years of military service at a U.S. Air Force base in Germany, an internship at The Herald Tribune International in Paris, finally, in 1966, the hiring of Washington Postin the federal capital.
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