I was all set to do my normal weekly news roundup today, but my desire to do so was destroyed by the main news story that greeted me this morning: Daniel Pearl is dead.

An innocent dying is always a tragedy, but as a member, to sound pretentious, of the journalistic community, hearing of an innocent journalist dying hits closer to home. In this case, sorrow over the outcome of the weeks-long ordeal becomes further amplified by the bizarre senselessness of it all.

Usually I can understand why a reporter died – even if that reason is simply “fate.” For most slain war correspondents, death comes from being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, hanging around the wrong people. It’s an accident, basically, the type of thing that the law of averages causes to happen every so often. That doesn’t make their deaths any less tragic or any easier for their loved ones to bear, but it does provide a context: Journalists wandering around war zones will, sometimes, die.

Pearl’s murder seems more heinous because it was more pre-meditated and, at the same time, provides even less of a rational than random wartime violence. Pearl wasn’t killed because he was unlucky, standing where the shrapnel flew. He wasn’t killed because he was a daredevil who was pushing his luck. He wasn’t killed because bad things happen in war.

He was killed because fanatics wanted to make a point – and to heighten the tragedy, they haven’t even done that.

If their goal was to get the Western media out of Pakistan, they’ve failed: reporters, including Pearl’s wife, are still risking their lives on the ground there to get the facts the world needs. If the kidnappers wanted to draw attention to the plight of Pakistan, they’ve failed miserably: Reporters — especially ones like Pearl, who through his stories and (as demonstrated by the interview he was setting up at the time of his kidnapping) his willingness to talk to those on the outskirts of civilized society – are less likely, and less able, to communicate the message of militants. If they were hoping to provoke the United States into rash movies against their country, they were deluded: The U.S. government isn’t (and shouldn’t) act militarily in retaliation for the death of a reporter.

I’ve never met Daniel Pearl, although when I heard of his kidnapping, I recognized the name from occasional readings of the Wall Street Journal. The fact that he was a dedicated reporter, creative writer and talented journalist makes his death a blow to his newspaper and to the profession of journalism. The fact that he left behind a wife and unborn child, as well as family and friends who loved him, makes this a crime against humanity.

A crime done for nothing.