Polk Winner, 33, Dies in Car Crash

Michael Hastings, the journalist whose reporting led to the ouster of the commander of American forces in Afghanistan in 2010, died in a car crash on Tuesday, his employer announced.

Mr. Hastings, 33, died in Los Angeles, said the employer, BuzzFeed.

“We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone,” said Ben Smith, the editor in chief of the news Web site, which Mr. Hastings joined in February 2012. “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.”

In a 2010, Mr. Hastings wrote a profile of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal for Rolling Stone under the headline “The Runaway General.” General McChrystal, now retired, was quoted criticizing President Obama and his advisers. Shortly after, he was fired by Mr. Obama.

Mr. Hastings won a Polk Award for the article.

Officials in Los Angeles confirmed a car crash early Tuesday in the Hancock Park neighborhood that killed a man, but officials from the coroner’s office could not confirm whether Mr. Hastings was the victim.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 19, 2013, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Polk Winner, 33, Dies in Car Crash .