Dwyer reflects on life as a journalist in Iraq conflict

Jim Dwyer, a New York Times reporter and two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient, spoke Monday about his career as a journalist and his experiences as an embedded reporter in Iraq in the first Rockefeller College Master's dinner.

Dwyer, a biology major and premed student at Fordham University, became interested in journalism through a twist of fate. He was driving along a road during his sophomore year in college, he recalled. "A guy in distress was lying on the side of the road. I decided, as a premed student, I should help him," Dwyer said. The man was having a seizure, which he later told Dwyer was the result of a Vietnam War injury.

This might have been an isolated story in Dwyer's life. But Dwyer had a developing love interest who would make the event his impetus to enter journalism.

"It may be a twisted thought, but I thought I'd write an article on it, an essay, an impressionistic report," he said. "I thought the girl would read it and be impressed."

Though the girl never read the article, it did make his school's newspaper. Dwyer started working for the paper.

After graduating, he got a job with New York's Newsday where he wrote a regular column — named "In the Subways" — to bring "where New York happens" to the newspaper's primarily Long-Island-based readership.

He also wrote the book "Subway Lives: 24 Hours in the Life of the New York City Subway."

In 1995, Dwyer was hired by The New York Daily News, where he continued to write columns for seven years. In 2001, tired of his own voice, he went to work for The New York Times. It was a few months before Sept. 11.

He was sent to Iraq as an embedded reporter, living, eating and sleeping with the 101st Airborne army unit. He experienced the miserable state of life in the deserts of Iraq, including a 48-hour period of sandstorms.

"I called the office, and they told me to write a story about what it's like to live in those conditions. I interviewed soldiers, and one said to me, 'Jim, you just got to embrace the suck,' so that's what I did," Dwyer said. "It was a terrible, terrible place, and as soon as I could leave, I left."

He returned home in April.

Six months after his experience in Iraq, Dwyer is teaching a journalism class, HUM 440: The Literature of Fact. He is also writing a book about Sept. 11, 2001 entitled "102 Minutes," told completely from the point of view of those who experienced the collapse of the towers firsthand.