LOS ANGELES: Award-winning journalist and war correspondent Michael Hastings, whose unflinching reporting ended the career of a top US Army general, died early Tuesday in a car accident in Los Angeles, his employer and family said.

Hastings, 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, who was US commander in Afghanistan at the time, and his aides mocking Obama administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, over their war policies.