Mark Fritz
Pulitzer Prize-Winning War Correspondent
Investigative Reporter
& Award-Winning Author
MARK FRITZ: PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING
WAR CORRESPONDENT
Mark Fritz won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his searing dispatches from Rwanda, where a meticulously planned genocide killed 800,000 people in 100 merciless days.
Fritz started as an intern at the Detroit News in 1977, working weekends at the Murder Capital's legendary 1300 Beaubien police beat, an intense prep school for bearing witness to horror. The crash course in killing was followed by nearly six years at the Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette, covering every beat in the house. He won a State Bar of Michigan award for his coverage of an 11-year-old rape victim caught in a furious abortion debate. He waited six years to interview her as an emancipated adult.
Fritz was a staff writer for the Associated Press from 1984-1997, and again in 2003. He reported on German unification, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone and Liberia, among others. As an investigative reporter for the Boston Globe, Fritz filed from the scene of the World Trade Center's destruction. As an AP editor on the Foreign Desk, he filed the U.S. "A-wire" bulletin on the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
Fritz subsequently was named East Berlin correspondent, where he quizzed everyone from skinheads to Stasi spies; then West Africa correspondent, where he interviewed Nelson Mandela. He later worked as a New York-based national writer for the Los Angeles Times (1997—2000), followed by stints as an investigative reporter at the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal. He was twice a guest instructor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and has appeared on media flagships such as MSNBC, CNN and C-Span's Book TV.
He left the news business for a stretch to perform humanitarian work in Sudan's Darfur region for the International Rescue Committee, and conduct war crimes investigations for Human Rights Watch in Uganda. The latter led to an International Criminal Court conviction of a cult leader who made children kill their parents, among other things.
At the Globe, Fritz re-reported World War II with fresh revelations based on newly declassified files, including moving up the date of the Holocaust. He was the first Western reporter to report from Chechnya and interview its mercurial new ruler. He wrote a ground-breaking Wall Street Journal story about the moral quandaries of the modern feeding tube. He had the last interview with doomed, would-be Nigerian President Moshood Abiola before his arrest and death in prison. LA Times Column One stories (he set the house record of 12 in 1997) include the power of parental grief to misshape policy; and the surge in dual citizenship as a sign of an emerging stateless, post-Cold War society..
LEGACY
Besides the Pulitzer, Fritz won the deadline writing awards from the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in 1995 (the first Jesse Laventhol Award) and the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) in 1994. His wide range of work is cited in numerous textbooks, encyclopedias, journalism anthologies, and citations Academic institutions from such as Yale, Harvard and Cambridge.
Fritz's nonfiction book, "Lost on Earth: Nomads of the New World," won a Salon Book Award, calling the book "strangely delightful." He also wrote the novel "Permanent Deadline," a black comedy about war and the hacks who cover it.
"Lost on Earth" is a staple of foreign affairs classes throughout the English-speaking world, frequently cited as a benchmark in post-Cold War primary research. Fritz is currently writing the autobiography "Crashing in America: A Memoir from the Front."
This 90s-style retro page is the official archive of :
Mark Francis Fritz, author, investigative journalist & Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent.
Marx, Fritz und Engels: Pulitzer Prize-Winning War Correspondent Mark Fritz poses on East Berlin's Alexanderplatz in 1990. The statue of Marx and Engels was nearly erased after German unification as the West tried to eliminate the trappings of the former Stalinist government. But the statue set survives, a testament to the power of comfortable familiarity over unfashionable ideology.
East Berlin as German unification looms like a promise and a threat. Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Mark Fritz strolls the boulevard of broken screams. Photo by Chris Clark.
A Soviet-built tank sits flattened while Kuwaiti oil fires blacken the sky. 1991, on the road to liberated Kuwait City. Photo by Mark Fritz., war correspondent.
Petra, the ancient city of overlapping civilizations in Jordan, virtually empty in 2003 because of the war in neighboring Iraq. Mark Fritz, war correspondent, is pictured.
A baby iguana, rescued from the crush of a refugee camp in Darfur, safely transplanted to a distant waterhole and foliage. Rescue carried out by Mark Fritz, AP war correspondent.
Lucy, a current rescue living with my ex, wants to play even after getting spayed. Photo by Mark Fritz, journalist.
Jerome Delay photo of journalist Mark Fritz on the clock on June 18, 2003, outside the palace that now houses the U.S. Embassy. Roughly 400,000 ex-Iraqi soldiers demanded their paychecks for surrendering to the U.S. invasion. Trigger-happy Americans in an armored vehicle tried to move through the unruly crowd, then fired "warning shots" that killed two Iraqis.
PERMANENT DEADLINE: By Mark Fritz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Tony and Dorothy Fritz, my late parents, cruise Manhattan just months before the World Trade Center was erased. I filed for the Boston Globe from Hoboken, the perfect ground-level view of Ground Zero. You could feel the heat and smell incinerated concrete as the buildings blackened the sky and burned to the ground. Anthony Fritz Jr. and Dorothy (Horvath) Fritz were both WWII veterans. They were proud of their son. Photo by journalist Mark Fritz.
An old friend strolls the walkway of an old fort in the Dry Tortugas, an archipelago in the Gulf of Mexico. The massive Fort Jefferson, alternating as fort and military prison, housed Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was convicted of conspiracy in the Lincoln assassination. The 1979 price of a seaplane ticket to the exotic spot costs $50. Now it's...unaffordable. Photo by journalist Mark Fritz. 1979.
On the road to unity: An East German couple fuels up as German unification looms. Massive unemployment and sharp cultural differences have been a drag not just on the united Germany's economy, but the world's. The lead obit on unification day, by Mark Fritz, AP staff writer:
"EAST BERLIN, East Germany (AP) --East Germany spent a melancholy last day as a nation and then faded into history on Tuesday, leaving behind 45 years of Stalinist rule and one brief, dizzy fling as a free and sovereign state.
SPEED TYPING (U.S. Army photo): During the 100-day ground invasion of Iraq in 1991, yours truly gave up the carefree life of a traveling "unilateral" (not beholden to military censors) to join the U.S. Army's First Cavalry Division on a march through nearly 200 miles of Iraq in 24 hours, the longest "forced march" in U.S. military history. At battle's end, I had to break free to write the tragic story about a kid in the unit who stepped on a U.S. Air Force cluster bomb and blew up. The Army wouldn't run it. After I left the pool system, Dave Crary, the AP editor running the war bureau at the time, said fuck it: write the story and we'll skip the monolithic military industrial editing machine. So Pvt. David Weizoreck got the battlefield obit he deserved, and the whole thing proved that editors on the ground will make calls that New York is too timid to make. The military threatened to toss the agency from the theater, but didn't. That would have been awkward.
SOUTH KANDAHAR PROVINCE: Photo by Mark Fritz, AP. Anti-Taliban fighters on a probe deep into the mountains along the Pakistan border. Two days later, they'd lose 20 men in an ambush. 2004
A Hutu militiaman stands at the ready in a section of Rwanda where the Tutsis have been wiped out. Photo by Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Fritz. 1994
An underground bar in largely lawless East Berlin, 1991. Photo of East Berlin correspondent Mark Fritz by Chris Clark.
Playing cards at home with Keeper on the Ivory Coast, where I ( Mark Fritz, West Africa correspondent for the Associated Press.) was based, covering 23 countries. Photo owned by Mark Fritz, journalist.
Foreign correspondent Mark Fritz, apartment hunting in Petra in 2003.
I traveled the fracturing USSR in October 1991, just two months before the Soviet Union would formally break apart. And all I got was this lousy card. Photo by foreign correspondent Mark Fritz.
SURVIVING THE PURGE: Many Communist icons were removed, but this statue in East Berlin's Treptower Park still stands in a united city. The 12-meter statue honors Soviet soldier Nikolai Masalov, who risked his life under Nazi gunfire to rescue a 3-year-old girl. Photo by journalist Mark Fritz.
WARZONE WHIZ: A U.S. army captain pissses in a cluster bomb casing during the 100-hour ground war in Iraq in 1991. A day later, two of his men would be killed by unexploded cluster bombs during a scramble for souvenirs. Photo by AP journalist Mark Fritz.
THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF JOURNALISM: 101 Masterpieces (ISBN 0-7867-1169-8); THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF WAR CORRESPONDENTS (ISBN 0-7867-0866-2} and AMERICA'S BEST NEWSPAPER WRITING (ISBN 10: 0-31244367-6) are among the anthologies featuring the work of journalist Mark Fritz.
KARL MARX STADT returned to its original name, Chemnitz, as Communism fell. In 1990, a smattering of protesters railed against the name change and the imminent removal of Marx' giant noggin. And damn, it's still there. Photo by AP Berlin correspondent Mark Fritz.
At home in Abdijan, Ivory Coast, where I served as AP West Africa correspondent in 1993-94. Notable stories included a ground-breaking, computer-assisted investigation of how Western nations were using Africa as a dumping ground for products that severely undercut local farmers. And that's my good girl Keeper, dog of three continents. Photo of yours truly, property of Mark Fritz, journalist.
FIRE IN KUWAIT: Photog Laurent Rebors and I crept close to the Kuwait-Saudi border disguised as British combat engineers to get past Saudi checkpoints. We were among the first journalists with eyewitness accounts of the scores of fires that burned for months. Laurent Rebors photo. 1991.
Mark Fritz, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Foreign Correspondent. I won the award for Rwanda, land of a thousand hills and 800,000 kills. Besides wars, I was an investigative reporter for the AP, LA Times, Kalamazoo Gazette, Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe. My books are LOST ON EARTH: Nomads of the New World, and PERMANENT DEADLINE, a satirical novel about war reporting.
I covered 911 at ground zero, where a dust-covered bank vice-president told me that authorities in Tower 2 told tenants to stay put after Tower 1 was hit. Many did and many died. I've written about genetic engineering of the food we eat, meaningless laws triggered by the power of parental grief; generational conflict and the DMV; and a computer-assisted look at how Western nations are dumping surplus food on Africa, crippling local farms. I've also written about end-of-life issues, including how a feeding tube for premature infants was now used on dying or vegetative adults, setting off myriad moral quandaries .
At the Iraqi border (the berm is the boundary freely ignored by nomads). These are two Egyptian army soldiers who let us interview fresh deserters from the Iraqi front.
Ticket for the deciding 5th game of the 1984, Detroit Tigers over the San Diego Padres. Detroiters celebrated the usual way: they rioted and set cop cars on fire.
A staredown with Roxy, my rescued stray. Inquiries about this retro-rudimentary site, the official page of Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Mark Fritz, can be addressed to info@mark-fritz.com.
Journalist Mark Fritz (yours truly) in Raleigh, NC, with his 2009 Kawasaki ZX-14 Ninja with M4 drag pipes and a Power Commander V super tuner, which I can say in all modesty was the fastest street bike in Raleigh.
Journalist Mark Fritz prepares a barbecue in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast, in 1994.
Anthony Walter Fritz, Jr., my father, was a motorcycle MP during WWII in Italy, and he passed his love of bikes down to his sons. Photo by Mark Fritz, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent.
Kawasaki 2009 ZX-14 with M4 drag pipes and a Power Commander V supertuner. Photo by journalist and bike enthusiast Mark Fritz.
CRASHING IN AMERICA: A Memoir from the Front, an upcoming autobiography by Mark Fritz, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent.
FUTILE PHONE CALL: Detained at Safwan after Iraq's 1991 surrender, interpreter Saleh Zamani and I faced espionage charges and were taken on a 1,435 km (892 miles) ride from Basra to Baghdad and beyond. At one point we escaped to a UN observer camp with a security man hanging on my wheel, but the observers turned us back over to Iraq.
Interrogated in Basra by pissed security men, they woke us up hournly by flipping lights, gave us wormy bread to eat and a garbage dump to sleep, Basra security was almost comically sinister. We were separated. I jotted down fake names (Bernie Abu Dhabi) of the people I'd supposedly interviewed. We were told we would be taken to Baghdad.
Security crammed into the truck and taunted us about our predicament on the ride over. We were interrogated again in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, listening to the screams of one poor soul being whipped with elastic we'd seen coiled around his jailer's hand.
We kept breaking down in the desert, the land covered in unexploded cluster bombs and other ordnance. We ate watermelon with a melancholy platoon assigned to guard a radio tower that now lay on its side, demolished.
The security men took the Land Cruiser and dumped us at the border with Jordan, which made us wait a day and change for a visa. A Palestinian businessman eventually gave us a ride to Amman, ending a thousand-mile march in less than a week, the high point only the brief beer in Baghdad. One of the AP's white-washed "history" books said the adventure lasted a third as long and only included Safwan. The agency has a history of botched reporter detention interventions, and, fn my caae, I just got extra desk duty.
I wrote a long dispatch about a nation scrambling to re-arm and recover, sans first person. AP had reported Saleh and me free after two days, and that was it. UPI, conversely, got the whole crazy excursion right.
But then, I'd escaped the AP-mandated, warzone-training class run by former SAS in England. It actually wasn't hard to lift the burlap bag from my head and bolt for the tree line, the sound of blank shots going off wildly while I disappeared into the forest.
These hostage-class grifts are based on grouping reporters together and making them wear signs and armor. I always found the less conspicuous, the better. Just an SUV with blacked-out windows. is the key.
Photographer Ricardo Marzalan and the intrepid crew of The Desert Lion, a vintage Land Rover that topped out at 45 mph. This is Baidoa, Somalia. Uncredited 2003 photo of Mark Fritz, journalist.
A US Army captain approaches a berm protecting a now-crushed tank. The hunt for souvenirs later killed two men from his company. US-led air strikes saturated the theater with cluster bombs, with one in 10 still unexploded. Photo by Mark Fritz.
LADY GODIVA OF THE CAROLINAS: Took a bike trip to artsy Asheville, NC, in 2010 and ran into a protest against a city decency law: Men could go shirtless in public while women could not. At least until this Frenchwoman showed up. Photo by journalist Mark Fritz.
Heading into Taliban country in southcentral Afghanistan in 2004. Photo by Mark Fritz, journalist and war correspondent.
My father was a motorcycle MP in Italy during WWII, and passed his fondness for bikes down to his sons. Here's a 2009 ZX-14 Ninja with M4 drag pipes and a Power Commander V. It was fast. (Photo by journalistmand motocycle enthusiast Mark Fritz).
Petra, 2003, the crossroads of ancient civilizations almost empty of tourists because Iraq War II is raging next door. Photo of Mark Fritz, journalist and author.
A Bradley Fighting vehicle races alongside the one I'm in as the 100-hour ground war gets underway in Iraq in 1991. Photo by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Mark Fritz.
Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman interviews Los Angeles Times New York Correspondent Mark Fritz in 1999 for the documentary "The Last Party," aka "The Party's Over." Only in Hollywoodland mixed with Manhattan could a kid from the Detroit suburbs interview Eric Clapton and cover the kick off of Prince's Purple Rain tour in Detroit, both for the Associated Press. Only in LA could I put Paul Newman, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the same story.
Adrift in the Sahara: A Tuareg woman and her son hunker down in a refugee camp outside Timbuktu, near the Mali-Mauritania border, where both countries were torn by ethnic violence in 1994, as they are now. Photo by West Africa correspondent Mark Fritz of the Associated Press. The photo is private and unpublished and all rights reserved.
With a passenger, sitting on my customized 2009 ZX-14 Ninja; it's a distant successor to the 1973 Kawasaki H2 I rode from Kalamazoo to California in 1980. It was then the fastest motorcycle you can buy, as is this Ninja in the photo. Photo of journalist Mark Fritz by Chris Clark.
NO LAND'S MAN: This is the mountain pass in 1990 between East Germany and Czechoslovakia, two countries that would cease to exist with the fall of Communism. The DDR was adopted by a really condescending West Germany that year, and Czech and Slovakia would start new timelines as separate countries. I'm convinced nations don't have eras; they have versions. (Photo of journalist Mark Fritz by Collins Yearwood)
CUDJOE KEY, USA: That goddam cheap typewriter we had to use in the first Iraq invasion finally found a home on a beach in the lower Florida Keys.
ICH BIN EIN BERLINER: A slight grammar slip, and JFK pledges solidarity with Berlin by calling himself a jelly doughnut. Photo by Chris Clark.
Even in 1991, it was strange the AP put together this team of white males for coverage out of Dahran, Saudi Arabia for Iraq War I. Supposedly, it's gotten better, though the agency is usually a decade or three behind the times.
It's the goddam Ant-Man! It's also Halloween.
A boy soldier forced to join the cult Lord's Resistance Army, which conscripted youngsters to kill their families in northern Uganda. He was one of scores of people I interviewed for Human Rights Watch and, ultimately, the International Criminal Court. The ICC subsequently issued an arrest warrant for cult leader Joseph Kony in 2006, but he remains at large, if he's alive. He was charged with murder, rape and enlisting children to be killers, among many other things. Photo by Human Rights Watch investigator and journalist Mark Fritz
Pirated copies of my satirical novel, Permanent Deadline, a roman à clef of sorts that triggered a round of slanderous character assassination by AP degenerates and grifters who hijacked the book by Mark Fritz, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent. It's free on Kindle.
Pultizer Prize-winning journslist Mark Fritz was among the first Western reporters to visit Berlin-Hohenschoenhausen, the notorious Stasi's main political prison. 1990.
South Sudan in 2006: Mother and child visit a clean water station maintained by the International Rescue Committee, one of the non-profits where I worked. Photo by IRC press attache and journalist Mark Fritz.
NINJAS: This is a 2021 Kawasaki Ninja 1000 SX, with a full Akrapovic exhaust system. Photo of Mark Fritz, journalist and motorcycle enthusiast.
SAUGATUCK, Michigan, on the frozen shores of Lake Michigan in the winter of 2010. Photo by journalist Mark Fritz.
Appearing on C-Span's BOOK TV, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mark Fritz addresses the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York on April 13, 1999. Fritz's spoke about his book "Lost on Earth: Nomads of the New World," which chronicles and puts into perspective the biggest human migration in history.