Kim Gamel reported as a foreign correspondent in Asia, Europe and the Middle East for The Associated Press and Stars and Stripes, before assuming a leadership role at the Honolulu Civic Beat in 2020. (Seana Ruff)
Kim Gamel’s on-the-ground reporting as a foreign correspondent spanned nearly three decades, covering some of the biggest stories of the day for The Associated Press and later at Stars and Stripes.
Born in Idaho and the daughter of an Air Force veteran, Gamel reported from war zones and hot spots in Asia and the Middle East and covered breaking news in Russia and across Europe.
She died on Wednesday, June 17, at St. Luke’s Medical Center, not far from her family home in Boise, at the hospital where she was born.
Gamel was 57. The cause was lymphoma.
“Kim was fiercely independent, prone to adventure, and committed to her life’s work,” said Seana Ruff, her sister. “She was known for her generosity and for her ability to change the focus from herself by connecting and asking questions of others.”
Gamel recently underwent a stem cell and bone marrow transplant at Stanford University Medical Center, in California, but the treatments failed to stop the disease, Ruff said.
“Kim fought with courage until the end,” Ruff said. “I had the privilege of being her donor and was present for the transplant. Even as she knew her prognosis was grim, Kim chose to keep working.”
A private online memorial service is being planned to accommodate Gamel’s network of friends and colleagues around the world.
Tributes to Gamel have started to pour in on social media. Several friends shared personal stories about her dedication to craft and career.
Journalist Kim Gamel was “fiercely independent, prone to adventure and committed to her life’s work,” said her sister, Seana Ruff. Gamel also was a top-notch Scrabble player. “Those closest to Kim will also remember her love of Scrabble! Try as we may, she was impossible to beat,” Ruff said. (Seana Ruff)
Ernesto Londono, a New York Times reporter, recalled meeting Gamel in 2007 on assignment in Baghdad.
Londono said he was a new correspondent working abroad and she was a seasoned journalist at the AP.
“Kim was commanding and unflappable, banging out copy at the speed of light. Her news judgment was impeccable, her moral compass finely tuned,” Londono posted in an online tribute.
The two became fast friends.
Gamel was passionate about bearing witness to history, Londono said.
She began at the AP in 1995 and stayed for nearly 20 years. She served as a reporter, editor and bureau chief internationally.
Her tenure at the wire news agency, by her own reckoning, spanned reporting from Seoul, Stockholm, Cairo, Baghdad, Kabul, New Delhi and New York.
She returned to the U.S. in 2020 to take a leadership role at the Honolulu Civil Beat, where she was deputy managing editor.
Gamel said she joined the Civil Beat to help bring a sharper focus on “accountability and watchdog stories” to the nonprofit news site.
The Civil Beat was named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in the breaking news category in 2024 for coverage of the Maui wildfires.
Before that, Gamel was an Asia-Pacific correspondent for Stars and Stripes from 2016 to 2020 based in South Korea.
Kim Gamel, right, Patrick Quinn, left, and Robert Reid in the AP's Baghdad office in 2004. (Robert H. Reid)
“Kim was very thorough in her reporting and editing, a real stickler for facts,” said Robert Reid, retired editor in chief at Stars and Stripes, who also worked with her at the AP in New York and abroad.
“Kim brought a humanity to her coverage of armed conflict. In wars, it’s easy for the real stories of real people to get buried in a mass of information about troop movements, bombing and grand strategy,” Reid said.
Londono also remembered Gamel for her relentless reporting on the brutality and casualties of the Iraqi civil war.
Her coverage included intimate stories about a 3-year-old girl named Shams Karim, seriously hurt and disfigured in a bombing that killed her mother.
Gamel’s reporting on Shams, which included her family’s desperate efforts to get medical care for her complex injuries, resulted in donations that covered the costs of reconstructive surgery in London.
Aaron Kidd, the Stars and Stripes Pacific bureau chief in Tokyo, noted Gamel’s work as the news organization’s correspondent in South Korea.
Gamel reported on some of the most important and challenging topics affecting U.S. troops and their families, Kidd said.
She wrote breaking news stories on ballistic missile threats coming from North Korea and reported on a series of suicides by service members on the peninsula.
Kidd also remembered Gamel for her compassion, reflected in stories about service members stricken with COVID-19, before the virus was widely-known or a vaccine was available.
“When COVID-19 first reached the U.S. military community in South Korea, Kim tracked down and interviewed one of the first service members known to have contracted the virus,” Kidd said. “She wanted to understand what the experience meant for the person living through it. That curiosity, persistence and empathy defined her work.”
Gamel’s journalism career combined her lifelong interests in writing and world affairs, Ruff said.
“From a young age, Kim wrote to find her place in the world. Her spirit of adventure started early on when she traveled as an exchange student to Ukraine,” Ruff said.
Gamel was a college student at the time majoring in Russian studies at Bates College in Maine, Ruff said. Her first reporting job after college was at an English-language newspaper in Moscow.
She later earned a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
”She caught the travel bug. Her work and adventures spanned the globe,” Ruff said.
Kim Gamel, right, is shown in 2019 with her mother, Bobbie Gamel, and sister, Seana Ruff. (Seana Ruff)
Gamel’s family is asking friends and colleagues to consider making a contribution to the Overseas Press Club Foundation in her honor.
The foundation provides scholarships to rising journalists who aspire to work as international correspondents.
“Kim was most proud of how she impacted young reporters and helped bring up a new generation,” Ruff said. “She took time to pass on her knowledge and experience to others, to fuel the passion of those just starting out.”
