Donovan Webster

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Donovan James Webster (January 13, 1959 – July 4, 2018)[1] was an American journalist, author, film-maker, and humanitarian.

A former senior editor for

Men's Health, Garden & Gun,[6] and The New York Times Magazine,[7] among other publications. He was also an advisory board member of the National Geographic Society, the interim editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, and a lecturer in the Department of Honors Media Studies at the University of Virginia. He lived outside Charlottesville, Virginia
.

Life

Born in

Breadloaf School of English
for MFA graduate school.

He then moved to

Conde Nast
Corporation, where he was soon employed. In 1986, working with friends, he co-founded Southern magazine, which was purchased by Time, Inc. in 1989. After that, he spent several years as senior editor at Outside magazine before going to write full-time.

In 1996, following a cover story he wrote in The New York Times Magazine about global

UN General Assembly
. Webster served as CIR's vice-chairman.

In 2005, he ground-reported and co-authored the United Nations report on destruction and disabilities created around the

2004 Banda Aceh Tsunami
.

In 2007, he was co-founder and became President of Tidene/USA: the U.S. arm of the non-governmental humanitarian organization Tidene (which he also co-founded in 2006). Originally a France-based project with offices developed in Washington DC, and

US African Development Foundation
, an arm of the U.S. Congress and USAID — and from a devoted conglomerate of French philanthropists and wine producers. In 2014, Tidene/USA was absorbed into a larger organization, Les Puits du Desert/Tidene.

When asked in a newspaper interview about his beliefs on God, Webster responded: "I don't know. I don't know if there is a God. There's something. There's obviously a rhythm to the universe. But if there is a God, it has to be a man, because a female God wouldn't have screwed up the world this much."

He wrote "Traveling the Long Road to Freedom, One Step at a Time," which was published in

Smithsonian magazine; this article was recently used in the English language and literature pre-release material (AQA).[citation needed
]

In 2006 and 2007, he was co-leader of the expedition Running the Sahara, an on-foot crossing of North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean beach in Senegal to the beach at the Suez in Egypt. The expedition was filmed and edited into a documentary film, Running the Sahara, narrated by Matt Damon and released in 2007 with the logistics support of Sam Rutherford at prepare2go.com. The project began in Senegal and went through Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Libya, before culminating in Egypt. Runners included Charlie Engle, Ray Zahab and Kevin Lin.

In February 2009, he and his son, James Webster, became graduates of Gruppo Storico Romano,[10] the Roman Coliseum's Gladiator School, as recognized gladiators with the organization's 11th Legion.

In July and August 2011, he and photographer

Madre de Dios Region in southeast Peru for the Amazon Aid Foundation. There they documented the environmental destruction of the upper-Amazon basin rainforest by illegal gold mining, a practice that has increased exponentially due to a recent leap in gold prices. A documentary film team followed their investigation. The result is Amazon Gold, a multi-award-winning theatrical documentary film narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock.[citation needed
]

Criminal conviction

On August 14, 2014, Webster was charged with

involuntary manslaughter, and in December Webster was formally indicted.[12]

On February 18, 2015, he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.[13]

In the February/March 2018 edition of AARP Magazine he wrote that he began drinking and suffering from PTSD after reporting on the Southeast Asian Tsunami in 2004. He recounted how his personal and professional life had been ruined by the time he spent in prison saying, "As I slowly edge toward 60, with a broken family, virtually no money, nothing great in the way of work prospects and only my wits and a few friends who love me still around, I have a powerful remorse for the damage I have caused. But what I don't have — perhaps because I simply can't afford it — is self pity. [...] But I have realized that there’s some great power in being around long enough to comprehend that no matter the damage we’ve done, a new door will open."[14]

Death

On the Fourth of July, 2018, Donovan committed suicide.[15]

Bibliography

See also

  • Aftermath: The Remnants of War

References

  1. ^ "Webster, Donovan". The Daily Progress. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  2. ^ "Donovan Webster - The New Yorker". The New Yorker.
  3. ^ "National Geographic Magazine". ngm.nationalgeographic.com. Archived from the original on January 9, 2008.
  4. ^ Webster, Donovan. "In Their Footsteps".
  5. ^ Webster, Donovan (2 September 2004). "The Story of John Muhammad's Partner in the D.C. Sniper Murders". Vanity Fair.
  6. ^ "Moonshine". Archived from the original on 2009-06-21.
  7. ^ "Glenn Campbell in the New York Times (June 26, 1994)". www.ufomind.com.
  8. ^ "The Nobel Peace Prize 1997". www.nobelprize.org.
  9. ^ "Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities". www.un.org. Archived from the original on 2006-12-25.
  10. ^ "Gruppo Storico Romano".
  11. Daily Progress
    . Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  12. Daily Progress
    . Retrieved 5 December 2014.
  13. ^ "Journalist, Author Donovan Webster Pleads Guilty to Involuntary Manslaughter in Virginia Wreck". FOX News. February 19, 2015.
  14. ^ Feb/Mar issue AARP pp 69–71
  15. ^ Janet Webster. "Donovan Webster's Battle With Depression and Addiction: His Wife's Story". AARP, December 6, 2018. Accessed February 6, 2022.
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