Feb

28

Baghdad blogs

Posted by Vera Haller on Feb 28, 2008 under: blogs, foreign news, newspapers, online news, television 

Blogs are good for many things, among them giving journalists a forum to focus on a particular subject. This blog is an example. It gives me the opportunity to write about changes in the news business.

Blogs also allow journalists to tell the story behind the story, to go into detail or to shoot off on a tangent in ways traditional news stories wouldn’t allow. The Iraq story has spawned many a journalist blog – most of them offering up painful stories of life behind the headlines. The New York Times is the latest to launch such a blog, Baghdad Bureau. The item I read, about a platoon of U.S. soldiers about to go home, provided vivid reporting with photos and audio clips from individual soldiers.

In another such blog, Baghdad Observer, McClatchy Newspapers Baghdad bureau chief Leila Fadel recently posted a poignant item about the isolation felt by the 13-year-old son of an Iraqi  colleague. The NBC News bureau also blogs at Blogging Baghdad.

The war also has inspired non-journalists to write. Take a look here at a directory of blogs and diaries from Iraq compiled by Yahoo.

Comments

2 Responses to “Baghdad blogs”

  1. Stephanie Thomas on March 3rd, 2008 9:29 pm

    I think that blogs are not only great for journalist to get their point of view out there but also for non-journalist. Blogs are another way for readers to retrieve information on certain issues/topics, to gain different persepectives from different angles, and to even give an opinion if they have one.

  2. Chiresse Paradise on March 11th, 2008 6:53 pm

    I’m responding to the article on Govenor Spitzer. He was recently found guilty of involvement in a prostitution ring. I believe what people do in their private time is their business, but I also believe what goes around comes around. Spitzer put people in jail that were involved in illegal prosititution making him very hipocritical. Maybe next time he’ll think before he acts.

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