In the Zone   

The Pentagon’s embedding plan was a winner for journalists and their audiences.

The skepticism was completely understandable.

When the Bush administration revealed its plan to "embed" journalists with military units, everyone wondered where the catch was.

After all, this is a regime that has hardly been known for its openness as far as journalists are concerned. That had been particularly true in wartime. In Afghanistan, the Pentagon warmly embraced the little-to-no access policy that characterized Grenada, Panama and Gulf War I. There was to be no hanging out with the GIs, World War II- or Vietnam-style.

But who knew? Now that the fighting has stopped, it's clear that the great embedding experiment was a home run as far as the news media--and the American people--are concerned.

Six hundred journalists had a first-hand view of the combat. That's a far cry from the first gulf war, when reporters were at the mercy of government briefings and that misbegotten press pool. It wasn't until after the war had ended that the truth emerged, when it became clear that those smart bombs weren't quite as smart as they had been cracked up to be.

The difference became crystal clear to me early in the war, when the fragging episode took place. Television was right there, all over the story from the get-go.

That set the tone. Journalists provided on-the-scene accounts of that remarkable dash through the desert. They also chronicled the surprising early rear-guard Iraqi resistance and the heartbreaking civilian casualties. Their reporting was often far ahead of the official briefings.

It was an embedded reporter, the Washington Post's William Branigin, who gave the lie to the government account when troops shot at a car packed with Iraqi civilians at an intersection on Highway 9. Branigin heard a captain yell at a platoon leader that he had killed a family because he hadn't fired a warning shot quickly enough.

The embeds, of course, didn't just cover the warts. Their battlefield presence gave their audiences a much fuller picture of the bravery and generosity of the American fighting men and women.

Not that the system was perfect. During the war's early days, some over-the-top, rah-rah reporting on television seemed to bear out the critics' worst fears: that embedded journalists would bond too closely with the soldiers they depended on and would be unable to provide objective coverage. And there was the luck of the draw factor: If your unit didn't see much action, you didn't have much of a story.

But on balance there's little doubt embedding was a winner. And of course it wasn't the only game in town. There were the intrepid unilaterals, reporting in the war zone on their own, taking huge chances as they talked to people and captured scenes the embeds would inevitably miss as they moved northward with the troops.

A special cadre of unilaterals consisted of those who remained in Baghdad. Reporters like the Washington Post's Anthony Shadid, the New York Times' John F. Burns and NPR's Anne Garrels provided vivid portraits of that beleaguered city during the run-up to the war, the massive bombing campaign and the complete collapse of civil order in the aftermath.

The war underscored once again the varying roles of the media. Television was simply stunning. The combination of technology and access made war a spectator event--you could see it as it happened. It was addictive. TV was the way most people got their war news. Cable news numbers skyrocketed.

But it was awfully squeamish about showing casualties. And something was missing in the information onslaught. After watching for four or five hours, I often wasn't sure what the lead was.

That's where newspapers excelled. Many were packed not only with excellent battlefield reportage, but with vitally needed analysis that helped sort things out. (Not that they were infallible--see my colleague Tom Kunkel's column on the misguided spate of sky-is-falling commentary).

I get the New York Times and the Washington Post at home, and on many days there was so much good stuff I could barely break away to go to the office--and I'm a guy who likes to go to the office.

Finally, the war reminded us once again what serious business journalism is, and how much it can demand of those who practice it. Despite the abundant dangers, hundreds and hundreds of journalists willingly ventured into the war zone. Fourteen of them died.

Michael Kelly and David Bloom were among them. These highly successful journalists hardly needed to punch this ticket. But they had to be there because that's where the story was.

We are all diminished by their loss.