After the American occupation ofIraq in 2003, Liz Sly took over the management of the Chicago Tribune newspaper office inBaghdad from 2003 to 2010, and covered pivotal events in Iraq, including her coverage of the Iraqi Parliament elections on 15 December 2005, and thecivil war in Iraq.[3][4]
After the death ofPope John Paul II on 2 April 2005, and being one of the few journalists in the world who has permission to cover the events of theVatican, the Tribune dispatched Liz Sly to cover the facts of the death ofPope John Paul II and the procedures for choosing a successor in accordance with papal decrees in theVatican.[5][6]
Her popularTwitter account was the subject of an academic paper about the viral impact of her retweet of a photo taken by Turkish journalistNilufer Demir of a dead toddler washed up on a beach on 2 September 2015.[7][8] Her tweet was retweeted over 7,000 times and the reactions prompted her to write an article about her choice to retweet the image, commenting that she has been searching for years for ways to convey the extent of the problems in Syria and was shocked that people might find her tweet sensitive in any way.[9] The week before, Sly was interviewed onNPR about theDestruction of Palmyra.[10]
