Image via New York Times

Over the weekend, The New York Times paid tribute in print to Anthony Shadid, the gifted foreign correspondent who died last week while on a reporting trip to Syria.

Mr. Shadid's final article, about Islamic intellectual Said Ferjani and democracy's footold in Tunisia, ran on the front page on Saturday.

Its lede is a poignant reminder of the talent lost:

The epiphany of Said Ferjani came after his poor childhood in a pious town in Tunisia, after a religious renaissance a generation ago awakened his intellect, after he plotted a coup and a torturer broke his back, and after he fled to Britain to join other Islamists seeking asylum on a passport he had borrowed from a friend.

Twenty-two years later, when Mr. Ferjani returned home, he understood the task at hand: building a democracy, led by Islamists, that would be a model for the Arab world.

“This is our test,” he said.

On Sunday, an excerpt from Mr. Shadid's forthcoming memoir, House of Stone, ran in the Review section. It describes the conflicting feelings of hope and antipathy Mr. Shadid experienced while reporting from his ancestral home in the Middle East.

Mr. Shadid, who was 43, was posthumously honored with a special Polk Award this morning. Tyler Hicks, the Times photographer who carried Mr. Shadid's body over the border to Turkey, was also honored.