Michael Hastings, 33, Winner of Polk Award

His death, in a car crash in Los Angeles at about 4:30 a.m., was confirmed by his wife, Elise Jordan. Mr. Hastings was believed to have been alone in the car, which struck a tree at high speed, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office. He lived in New York City.

In 2010, Mr. Hastings won a George Polk Award, presented by Long Island University for reporting in the public interest.

The award honored his Rolling Stone magazine cover story, “The Runaway General,” published that June. In it, Mr. Hastings profiled Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, then the top commander of United States forces in Afghanistan.

The article quoted the general and members of his staff making disparaging comments about members of the Obama administration, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden, with respect to their handling of the Afghan campaign. Within days of its publication, President Obama met with General McChrystal in the Oval Office before firing him, ending his 34-year military career.

An inquiry into the article by the Defense Department inspector general the next year found “insufficient” evidence of wrongdoing by the general, his military aides and civilian advisers.

The inspector general’s report also questioned the accuracy of some aspects of the article, which was repeatedly defended by Mr. Hastings and Rolling Stone.

Mr. Hastings was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone at his death and had also written for GQ and Newsweek magazines.

Michael Mahon Hastings was born on Jan. 28, 1980, in Malone, N.Y. After attending Connecticut College, he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New York University.

As a young correspondent for Newsweek, Mr. Hastings covered the Iraq war. His fiancée, Andrea Parhamovich, followed him there, taking a job with a nongovernmental organization. She was killed in 2007 when her car was ambushed by Sunni insurgents.

Mr. Hastings’s memoir of the experience, “I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story,” was published in 2008.

Besides his wife, Mr. Hastings is survived by his parents, Brent and Molly Hastings; two brothers, Jeff and Jon; and his grandmother, Ruth Mahon.

His other books are “The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan” published last year, and “Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama’s Final Campaign,” published in January.

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 19, 2013

An earlier version of this obituary, using information from the family, misstated the name of Mr. Hastings’s surviving grandmother. She is Ruth Mahon, not Ruth Mahon Hastings.

Michael Hastings, Polk Winner, Dies in Crash at 33

Hastings, who was 33, was described by many of his colleagues as an unfailingly bright and hard-charging reporter who wrote stories that mattered. Most recently, he wrote about politics for the news website BuzzFeed, where the top editor said colleagues were devastated by the loss.

"Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians," said Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief.

Smith said he learned of the death from a family member.

Authorities said there was a car crash early Tuesday in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles that killed a man, but coroner's officials could not confirm whether Hastings was the victim.

Hastings won a 2010 George Polk Award for magazine reporting for his Rolling Stone cover story "The Runaway General."

His story was credited with ending Gen. Stanley McChrystal's career after it revealed the military's candid criticisms of the Obama administration.

Hastings quoted McChrystal and his aides mocking Obama administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, over their war policies.

At a Pentagon ceremony for his subsequent retirement in 2010, McChrystal made light of the episode in his farewell address. The four-star general warned his comrades in arms, "I have stories on all of you, photos of many, and I know a Rolling Stone reporter."

When he died, Hastings was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where Managing Editor Will Dana was quoted Tuesday saying Hastings exuded "a certain kind of electricity" that exists in great reporters whose stories burn to be told.

"I'm sad that I'll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write, and sad that he won't be stopping by my office for any more short visits which would stretch for two or three completely engrossing hours," Dana said.

Hastings was also an author of books about the wars. "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan" was published late last year and details shocking exploits of the military overseas.

In 2010, with the publication of "I Lost My Love in Baghdad," Hastings told the story of being a young war correspondent whose girlfriend died in Iraq.

In the summer 2013 issue of Vermont Life magazine, Hastings was quoted telling an audience at the Burlington Book Festival that he doesn't believe in objectivity in journalism.

"What I try to do is be intellectually honest in my writing," he said.

Hastings' family moved to Vermont when he was 16, a state he told the magazine was his "spiritual home." According to the magazine, he lived in New York with his wife.

Media Decoder: Defying Naysayers, ‘Gatsby’ Proves a Box-Office Winner

LOS ANGELES — “If history is any indication,” a Forbes report read on May 3, “ ‘The Great Gatsby’ will bomb rather hard.” BoxOffice.com at one point projected very soft opening-weekend sales of about $24 million. Early on, several studios were so worried about the movie’s multiplex prospects that they passed on making it.

Oops.

“The Great Gatsby,” directed by Baz Luhrmann, has become the latest example of the Hollywood machinery getting audience interest wrong. “Gatsby,” adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel and starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, is now expected to take in at least $330 million worldwide.

With that kind of box-office success, the movie should be able to generate $200 million or so more from ancillary sources like DVD sales and reruns on cable channels, studio executives said.

Profitability is another matter, affected by unknown factors, including how compensation for Mr. DiCaprio and Mr. Luhrmann was structured. The movie was also expensive to make; executives who worked on “The Great Gatsby” contend it cost about $105 million after heftier-than-normal rebates from filming in Australia. Global marketing costs, after factoring in partnerships, ran $90 million. (Some insiders say those costs were substantially higher.)

Is it surprising that “The Great Gatsby” has succeeded? Apparently not to a lot of movie fans. Who would bet against Mr. DiCaprio in a flashy retelling of one of literature’s best-known stories?

A lot of people did. Village Roadshow, a film financier and production company, showed interest early on, agreeing to collaborate with Sony. But Sony, which had a flop with “How Do You Know” around the time “The Great Gatsby” was getting under way, decided it was too risky.

Members of Mr. Luhrmann’s management team said he then approached other studios but got one no after another: too expensive; mainstream audiences would not be interested; his last movie, “Australia,” was a disappointment.

Warner, with Village Roadshow, finally said yes, but only after Warner’s president of production, Greg Silverman, became an avid supporter of the project.

So, with the money now rolling in, is Mr. Luhrmann’s camp saying “told you so”? In true Hollywood fashion, it is gloating in private while trying — successfully, apparently — to get the word of its vindication out there.

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