Baghdad Diary

Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi published excerpts of her diary in the Columbia Journalism Review:

Tuesday, September 14
The insurgents have brought the war to downtown Baghdad. For the fourth day in a row Haifa Street, a strip of old houses and Soviet-style apartment blocks, is a battleground between Americans and rebels. A few days ago, I watched Mazen, an Arab colleague with Al Arabiya news channel, get shot by an American helicopter as he was doing a live stand-up on Haifa Street. He died on television as I sipped my morning coffee.

Good News-Bad News

and I had an exchange about journalism recently that I thought raised some important questions. I’d like to take a stab at the answers here, and I welcome working journalists and other writers to add their two cents.

The Benefactor

I appear to have an anonymous benefactor: someone donated 12 months to my paid account, extending it to April of 2006.

I don’t know who did this, nor why, but it was a very nice thing to do. If you’re out there reading this, thank you very much.