Category: journalism

Drums and Things

I just finished putting together a video project I was working on for the paper and elsewhere. It was an afternoon/evening of shooting and editing. I think it came together well, considering the limited resources I had to put into it. It’s still uploading, but as soon as it’s finished I’ll be sure to post it. It’s alway fun to try something new.

Sometimes You Don’t Know What You Have

I shot this photo today of Steve, a 21-year-old man just back from Afghanistan. He won several medals while he was there, and his grandmother is from Fryeburg. I’m writing something up for our 9/11 10 year anniversary edition. Steve is going to send me some photos of him from while he was in Afghanistan, so the photo was an afterthought. I was flipping through the images on my computer tonight, however, and I came upon this one. Now, granted, I know he was part of team that was attacked after an IED attack, and he was one of those who counterattacked and maybe saved someone’s life. I also know he was at his base when IDF—indirect fire—started raining down, and he and the rest of his platoon left the protection of the bunker to respond with M240 Bravos. And I know when I was his age I just as easily could have joined the army because my hometown seemed boring. But the fact is I look at this photo, his anchored gaze, and it catches me. I feel like he can see me now, hours after I thanked him for his service. It is an incredibly powerful image, because it shows just who is risking and sacrificing for the United States: kids. Well-intentioned, friendly kids. Kids who loved the Red Sox in 2001, when the war he just returned from started.

That’s why I love photojournalism—one photo can change your entire day, your entire experience, your entire life. One shot can tell a story. This one does for me.

(Unfortunately the colors don’t reproduce well here. I’ve got to figure that out.)

NOT an Embedded Reporter

This would be terrifying. It’s a news report from Tripoli, written by a BBC reporter holed up in a hotel as the rebels come storming in. While he wrote this piece, and indeed while I write this post, it was not assured that he would make it home safe.

I embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq. While there was some danger, it was not extreme. Reporting in this situation, however, is far more tenuous but also crucial. “Boots on the ground” isn’t just about the military. How are the rest of us supposed to know what is happening? How do we get passed the propaganda? It’s these reporters, the ones willing to plop themselves down in Tripoli when rebels are looking to overrun the cities, that tell those stories. And bless them, because not everyone wants to be hanging around at ground zero.

The Libya story, after months of slow burn, has erupted tonight. We’ll see where it is by the morning, and beyond.

Write What You Know

Every once in a while you get to write about something you know a lot about and about someone you know. Sometimes that can be great. Other times that can suck.

I didn’t put anything up about this story, I don’t think, but last week a man fell roughly 100 feet while rock climbing on Cathedral Ledge. I know about climbing, and I knew the man. Thankfully he lived, but he had to spend two nights in the hospital and was very shaken afterward.

The other day he came by the office and dropped off a card. That’s where I snapped the photo. He gave me and another reporter two scratch tickets each, a play on how lucky he was to survive the fall. His streak ended, however, before he bought the tickets, because neither Tom nor I won anything.

Somedays the news is impersonal, something abstract and in no way connected to you. Some days, however, it is the exact opposite. At least this time the news wasn’t all bad.

The Bang Bang

“Journalism is not a profession. It’s a craft.”

I read The Bang Bang Club last year. Before that I didn’t know much about Greg Marinovich, or his close friend Joao Silva. Days after I finished the book, Silva’s legs got blown off by a landmine in Afghanistan. This interview is from April, when Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed in Libya, when Terry Gross had him on Fresh Air. Excellent look at war photography and journalism.

Sad Reminders

See this photo? This is the Tigris River in Iraq, where it passes though the city of Al Kut, or Kut. I passed through there on my way from COB Delta to Camp Shocker this winter. I remember being amazed to see so much water. It didn’t seem possible amid the country I’d seen.

At 7:45 a.m. yesterday, according to the New York Times, two car bombs exploded there, killing 35 people and wounding 71 more. Those were just two of 42 intertwined attacks around the country that killed almost 90. It was the most violent days there in a long time.

It is chilling to look at this picture, just one of several I snapped out the window of the MRAP as it drove through Kut, and think how exposed the people there are to the daily violence. Yesterday was a bad day to be an Iraqi living in Iraq. If this level of violence continues many more days will be bad days. Last trip I was behind a blast wall almost the entire time. I may do the same for the next trip, but at some point real reporting requires you to walk among the people, even if some of them want you dead. It’s a terrifying proposition, but that’s where the value comes from of having someone there.

Maybe it comes from having just watched The Killing Fields, but the story can’t always come from the mouths of lieutenant colonels. We’ll see where that idea gets me…