Originally Posted by
Cori
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.
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