BRENT RENAUD RIP

 

REST IN PEACE: “It is with the most profound sadness to announce today that my dear friend and brother Brent Renaud was killed by Russian forces today in Ukraine while reporting on the war there. Juan Arredondo, a filmmaker and my former graduate advisee student at Columbia Journalism School, was also shot but is recovering after surgery. Brent was a brilliant filmmaker.

We worked in some insanely bad places together over the years, from months on end in Somalia, to witnessing the fight against ISIS in Iraq, to seeing ISIS’s attempted takeover of Libya. We slept on boats together, in bunkers together, blown up school houses and in shady hotels. He always looked exhausted. Seldom smiled. There was an anxiousness behind those tired eyes. What I saw in them was a man always trying to figure out what next.

He never stopped working. He was consumed by telling people the honest truth behind the stories he covered. He was fearless. You could not intimidate him. He cared deeply about the people he filmed. If you wanted to know what he thought, you didn’t need to ask him. And he probably wouldn’t tell you, because that’s how he hid his grief and emotions. But you could find the answer in his films. He and his brother Craig found them everywhere. From economically challenged schools in Chicago to homeless shelters in New Orleans to battlefields far and wide.

He was an understated scholar and a reluctant hero of humanity. He won every award that mattered in broadcast journalism. An Arkansas kid educated at Columbia U. and later at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow. When he won his Nieman Fellowship he thanked me as if my letter even mattered. It cracked me up because sometimes I think he didn’t even know himself how talented he was. Beyond humble.

I’ll miss him more than I can put into words. My deepest sadness goes out to his family and those who loved him. You know who you are. Brent does, too."

- Jeff Newton