A bright light in the world of American journalism, not American media sensationalism, has gone out. David Bloom has passed away.

In my line of business, I meet many journalists. The new school of journalists are frequently so blood hungry to make their mark in the business that they loose sight of what reporting is all about, processing the news as people and reporting it fairly. David Bloom was not one of them.

I met David on a personal level, shortly after the Towers fell. He was one of the first reporters down at the site and reported almost nonstop for that week. He reported tirelessly, although when I met him, the cameras were off and he looked very much like a man who had seen too much and felt even more.

I met him when he came up to the St. Regis, where he was storing clothes and showering. I doubt he slept there, he appeared to have not slept in days, much like the rest of New York. He was in the lobby, wearing waders and looking like a displaced longshoreman. My friend D. and I stopped him because we knew he'd been closer to the scene that we could get access and we asked him to describe to us what it was like at Ground Zero and if he thought there was a chance that victims would be rescued.

He looked at each of us with enormous sorrow, his eyes that on television appear so confident and knowledgable, were pools of heartbreak for what he had witnessed and he stopped what he was doing for about 15 minutes and described to us exactly what he had witnessed. He then told us about the rescue effort and the factors that the men were working against and sadly told us that he just didn't know if anyone would be found alive. It would be a miracle, he said. A miracle.

He asked us again for the names of the people we were searching for - not for a story - but he seemed to commit them to memory and he said to us, I hope you find them. I will be thinking about you and their families. I wish you best of luck. And he meant it.

David Bloom was just a man in his own American city, wearing waders for protection, witnessing an act of war and processing enormous grief for people he didn't know in life but was learning more about in their deaths.

In some way I think that time prepared him for the recent trip to Iraq that seemed to cement his distinguished career. David Bloom had seen and reported on war in his own backyard, like many media here, but unlike them, he got down and dirty in the crux of the battle and came out scarred by the enormous grief that was shared in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.

David Bloom was a husband, a father and a man. To me, above all of this, he was America's finest broadcast journalist, bringing the integrity that he summoned in each of his roles as a person to the stories that he reported on for America.

He is greatly missed.

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