Robert I. Friedman

When Robbie was at his worst, he was at his best.
The sicker he became, the more compassionate he was.
Everyone remembers Robbie as an extraordinary journalist. I remember Robbie as an extraordinarily compassionate brother.
Robbie - I will be remember you for the years before you picked up your pen. Your writing was merely the topping.
I'll love you always

Robert was an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow in 1987 investigating the rise of the radical right in Israel. He did terrific work and later turned his research into a book. He took great care in reporting a very dangerous and important story. He was an exceptional journalist and all those in the APF family mourn his death.

Journalists all owe Robert Friedman a huge debt for showing how transnational investigative reporting can be done. And we are losing him just when Robbie's clear insight -- into violent extremism, into the mideast -- are more needed than ever.

Sure, he was couragous. But he was also unfailingly decent and humane, two qualities not eroded by death threats, or by reporting on some of the most vicious people on earth.

As deputy editor and then editor of the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section, I worked with Robert on many of the great pieces he did for us. He was, without qualification, one of my favorite authors not only because of the courage and quality of his investigatory reporting but because his zeal for the truth never detracted from his personal graciousness, courtesy, fairmindedness and good will. It's too bad that there are not more journalists of his caliber among us.

The closest I ever got to meeting Robert Fredman personally, I think, was via telephone a couple of times over the years. But it was almost uncanny how many times I kept coming across his work, no matter what I was working on, and discoveriung her had something important to add. I pay him the highest compliment I can muster for this often unrewarding business: He made a difference.

I am so sorry to learn of Robbie's death. I have liked and admired him since we worked together at the Voice almost 20 years ago. Rarely have I known anyone as courageous as he, who faced down the threat of his violent human adversaries and of the disease that finally took his life. In that abbreviated but full life, he upheld every ideal his colleagues profess about journalism's methods and purposes. Sometimes, as Sydney Schanberg says, that was an awfully lonely mission. I send my...