By Shawn Donnan, FT World News Editor

Anthony Shadid (C) as he interviews residents of Cairo's impoverished Imbaba neighborhood, during the Egyptian revolution. AFP PHOTO/ED OU FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Middle East and its conflicts have generated plenty of great works of journalism. However, the reporting produced by Anthony Shadid, the New York Times correspondent who died on assignment in Syria on Thursday, was exceptional.

While many others have found a calling in grand analysis of the region’s geopolitics, his was in the often heartwrenching stories of its people.

For more than a decade, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner gave the Middle East’s citizens a compelling voice in a western media often more prone to stereotype and cliché. Read more