Blogging to the nth degree
p2p news / p2pnet: Sites run by people who disseminate unspun news, information and data online have all but replaced the traditional, frequently heavily biased, corporate media in CyberSpace.
They’re very different from mainstream ‘news’ outlets in a number of ways, one of the most important being as often as not, they’re created and maintained by people who are actually a part of the events they’re covering.
That’s what makes them real and believable and blogger Michael Yon, 41, an ex-US Army Green Beret, has pushed that to the ultimate limit.
"After getting himself embedded as a freelance journalist with troops last year, he used his Internet blog to report on the car bombs, firefights and dead soldiers," says the Casper Star-Tribune.
"But he also wrote descriptively about acts of compassion and heroism, small triumphs in the country’s crawl toward democracy and the gritty inner workings of the military machine."
Then he, "crossed the line from observer to participant," says the story.
"In August, during a fierce firefight in downtown Mosul, Yon and witnesses say he picked up an M4 rifle, reloaded and fired three times at insurgents inside a shop as two of the battalion leaders lay wounded nearby. That’s a no-no for embedded journalists, and it brought a stern reprimand from the Army."
But, "As soon I saw the rifle, I just grabbed it," he’s quoted as saying. "It was just a reflex."
"It’s a very complicated world and you can’t learn about it by sitting back and reading about it."
Also See:
Casper Star-Tribune – Blogger Gains Following With Iraq Reports, January 29, 2006
