The world lost a great journalist when New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid died all too soon yesterday in Syria. That he was in Syria at all tells you much of what you need to know about this intrepid war-and-peace correspondent.

From the Times:

At Work in Syria, Times Correspondent Dies

Anthony Shadid, a gifted foreign correspondent whose graceful dispatches for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Associated Press covered nearly two decades of Middle East conflict and turmoil, died, apparently of an asthma attack, on Thursday while on a reporting assignment in Syria. Tyler Hicks, a Times photographer who was with Mr. Shadid, carried his body across the border to Turkey.

And that last sentence tells you all you need to know about the Times’s intrepid photographer Tyler Hicks, a magnet for wartime drama (see his 2011 Commencement Address/Slideshow at Boston University here).

Shadid’s death leaves a gaping hole in what has arguably been the most compelling Middle East coverage anywhere (figuring in the redoubtable C.J. Chivers’ reporting as well).

Anthony Shadid, dead at 43. He will be greatly missed.