I would agree that naylor has written some good pieces, and of course his book Not a Good Day to Die is a gem.

He is a culprit of one-layer reporting as well though, as evidenced by some of the articles he wrote on the shift of Marine forces to the Anah and Rawah area after Stryker elements had to be moved to support ops in Baghdad. He attributed casualties the battalion suffered to a lack of knowledge and familiarity with the area. Surprisingly enough, had he actually talked to more of the Marines involved, he would have realized that the unit in question certainly had veterans (some on their 3rd Iraq tour) of operations in those exact areas, and were not noobs to the Euphrates area of Anbar.

I'm kind of glad that you mentioned Naylor Ski, because I have one prejudice against reporters that I forgot to mention.

I think many of these folks, looking for the juicy story, do more than just exaggerate or drift from reporting to commentary. They also hide behind "un-named sources", or "certain anonymous members of the command", etc., when introducing lines of thought that are in fact the reporter's thoughts and bias alone. That skews the reporting to the level of irresponsibility, and I think it's shameful.

As another case in point, I read an article in the Marine Times the other day, which outlined the removal of a MARSOC company from the Afghan AO recently. This article went to new levels of silliness, and started to quote posters on internet forums who were supposedly, "veterans of years of SOF operations".

I think that is a line of crap to draw any reporting from an internet forum, without establishing the bonafides of any person interviewed, and then actually physically interviewing them. It's not something to be accomplished by private message, but it seems to be becoming more prevalent as topics of a military nature become a hot-button.