And editor, publisher and writer Warren Hinckle has died. Hinckle was the editor of the magazine Ramparts, which he helped turn into a leading voice for the 1960s left. The magazine won a Polk Award for a 1966 article that revealed a Michigan State University group operating in Vietnam was in fact a CIA front group. It also published Eldridge Cleaver’s prison letters and Che Guevara’s diaries. Hinckle was also a major figure in the emergence of “gonzo journalism.” This is Hinckle speaking about editing Hunter S. Thompson’s famous article about his trip to the Kentucky Derby.

Warren Hinckle: “It was just a mess. It didn’t make much sense at all, the article. So, I just kind of bundled it all up and took a walk up the street around the corner to the Tosca. And, fortunately, it wasn’t a crowded night, so I sat in one of these back red booths and spent a couple hours actually reading this thing and figuring the heads and the tails. And it was episodic, to say the least. And to reassemble this, it was like—oh, dear, it was sort of like trying to assemble a very big, complex crossword puzzle without having the picture on the box.”

Warren Hinckle died on Thursday at the age of 77 from complications of pneumonia.