NY Times Covers Basra from Baghdad

Intrepid NY Timesmen JAMES GLANZ and STEVEN LEE MYERS write a story about fighting in Basra while in Baghdad and Ohio (that's somewhere in the Midwest of the US of A). The two cities (Baghdad and Basra) are over 300 miles apart and are connected by road and rail. Ohio, on the other hand is a few thousand miles from the action, but that's close enough for the NY Times.

The headline: Assault by Iraq on Shiite Forces Stalls in Basra

You mean the battle isn't won in a few days? Quagmire here we come!

So how are our intrepid nimrods getting the story about what's going on in Basra? The same way the news is primarily reported from Iraq: from local "stringers." Of course, most of these have a dog in this fight. But then, the reporters themselves have their own biases so their being there would not get us any better picture of what's going on.

The Times gives the names of contributors to this story:

James Glanz reported from Baghdad, and Steven Lee Myers from Ohio. Reporting was contributed by Qais Mizher, Ahmad Fadam, Mudhafer al-Husaini, Hosham Hussein, Erica Goode and Karim al-Hilmi, and employees of The New York Times from Basra, Kut, Baghdad, Hilla, Kirkuk and Diyala Province.

UPDATE:
Long-Distance Reporting

Check out the bylines on the news-reports on the fighting in Basra and see if you can find any foreign reporters who are actually in the city they are writing about. The New York Times's James Glanzer is filing from a compound in Baghdad. The BBC's reporters are doing the same. Depending on phone calls to more or less reliable — or partis-pris — Iraqi stringers at the other end of the country, they might as well be filing from Amman or Tel Aviv or New York. It's the usual complacency and dishonesty at work. On the other hand there's something impressive about reporters who may never have never visited Basra — the country's second city and an hour's flight away — sounding authoritative about the place and its atmosphere . . . This is mainstream reporting on the Iraq war as it has evolved. It's why the Michaels Totten and Yon are so important, and the milblogs, and the Iraqi blogs like Healing Iraq.