Schanberg won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his Cambodia coverage. The citation reads, "For his coverage of the Communist takeover in Cambodia, carried out at great risk when he elected to stay at his post after the fall of Phnom Penh." His 1980 book "The Death and Life of Dith Pran" was about the struggle for survival of his colleague Dith Pran in the Khmer Rouge regime. The book inspired the 1984 film "The Killing Fields" in which Schanberg was played by Sam Waterston.