Hoagland studied under a world renowned scholar and author, Herbert Marcuse, who wrote Eros and Civilization along with One Dimensional Man.
[citation needed] In 1970, Hoagland was at a massive anti-war movement in downtown Los Angeles, when the journalist Ruben Salazar was shot and killed by police.
The partner of this journalist now needed someone else to work with, and Hoagland stepped up to help, entering a short career as a sound man.
He worked with reporter Ignacio Rodriguez from a Mexican newspaper and who was shot and killed by a sniper soon after in Lebanon.
[8] Later on he journeyed to Beirut to photograph the withdrawal of the United States Marines and finally ended up in El Salvador, where he was killed.
The area had been restricted because of multiple gun fights starting, but the journalists were allowed entry "at their own risk" to reach the city of Suchitoto.
The Salvadoran army fired an M-60 machine gun from across the street directly at the photographers taking cover in the brush.
Robert Nickelsberg, a fellow photographer from Time magazine, said "He was a good man who worked very hard, loved what he did and none of us really need this at this point, but those are the risks.
"[1] Ivan Montesinos, a Salvadoran reporter for UPI, states "He was no fool, when you went into the field with him, I felt safe because he knew how to move between the shots.
"[9] The journalist and photographer 'John Cassady,' played by John Savage in the 1986 movie Salvador was loosely based on Hoagland.