Further Consideration: Survey of Newsies
Okay, first, if someone can backchannel me how to do the thing where you make it obvious you're quoting someone, I'd really appreciate it.
That said, as I've backchanneled Marc, I think that were we to proceed with a survey of newsies, it would be critical that our criteria for who to survey be set completely aside from any results coming from the military survey. They need to be based on something like self-definitions of "beat" ("do you consider yourself primarily a Pentagon or national security correspondent?") or by empirical criteria, like number of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, or total time in those bureaus. If the point is to simultaneously or near-simultaneously produce these parallel surveys as a way of exploring the attitudes these two groups hold, to look for the "flash points" (to use Marc's term) or the attributions the groups hold that can become the basis for resolving conflict and moving forward ina more productive way, the newsies have to believe they had as much or as little input into their survey as military personnel had in theirs, that it is rigorously fair, and parallel in every way.
My 2@.
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Alternative approach to "newsies"
If I were developing this project - I'm not, Marc is - I most likely would not use survey methodology to get at the newsies. This is a rather more limited group than the military and the more influential ones are even fewer. Therefore, I would address them in a series of selected in-depth interviews. This approach would, I think, cut the cost and the time as well as get satisfactory answers.
If You've Deployed In the Last 24 Months . . .
Thank you for the suggested names of journalists, but I have a slightly different question. My sense is that there are two competing pressures pulling at outlets. On the one hand, b/c the price of covering the war is reaching astronomical heights, more and more outlets other than those at the very top tier (the nets, the newsweeklies, the very top dailies) are at least considering pulling the plug on bureaus.
At the same time, smaller reg'l dailies and local TV stations, even when they otherwise may not be very good, feel obligated to provide very high quality coverage of bases and units in their area as part of their mission. For ex, papers in North Carolina which might not be on your list of the top papers in the country routinely provide excellent military coverage b/c there are so many bases in the state, and despite the fact that our local television stations are simply excecreble, there are reporters here who have covered the military for twenty years and do a good job of it. My sense is that even though many of these outlets certainly don't have deep pockets, they will still periodically send reporters out to embed b/c that's part of how they define their mission of covering the units in their communities.
Here's my question: is that still true? If you've deployed in, let's say the last 24 months, have you seen reporters embedding with your unit from outlets other than the nationals? Local television outlets, daily papers from media markets, let's say smaller than the Boston Globe (yes, I know they've pulled the plug on foreign coverage entirely, but that's a recent move, and that's a good place to draw the line b/w "national" and "reg'l" daily.)
No need to name names here, a simple, "yes, it's happened," either regularly or periodically would be of great use.