From the Editor: Reporters in Baghdad are a source of pride for Bee

I got a note recently from Hans Engh of Fair Oaks, who asked why The Bee hadn't done more to promote the McClatchy Baghdad bureau and "Inside Iraq," a blog written by the bureau's Iraqi staff for more than a year.

This reader and others took note of a Jan. 17 piece by Michael Massing in the New York Review of Books that singled out "Inside Iraq" and more broadly recognized our news organization's independent-minded reporting.

"When it comes to covering the war in Iraq, McClatchy Newspapers has always done things a bit differently," wrote Massing, who went on to say that the Iraqi-written blog "fills a major gap in the coverage" of how the U.S. troop surge and other military and political efforts are playing out.

"Politically active Americans seem mainly interested in one question – is it working?" Massing wrote. "To find out, American journalists have embedded with U.S. troops, gone out with them on patrol, interviewed lieutenants, captains and colonels. … In the process, stories about the Iraqi people and how they see the surge, and the war in general, have been squeezed out."

Those stories come through regularly on "Inside Iraq." Our Baghdad staffers don't attach full names to their posts, for safety reasons. Yet their voices are strong and varied: sometimes bitter, sometimes hopeful and occasionally profound in their insights. They speak for themselves, not for McClatchy, but their contributions give readers a window on life in Iraq that policy stories and news coverage alone can't provide.

Like most major news organizations covering the war and its effects, McClatchy has relied heavily on Iraqi staffers, who gather information and help our journalists operate but who also endanger themselves and their families in doing so.

The Iraqi-written blog is "the only place where one may read what the Iraqis themselves actually feel about the American occupation," local reader Engh said in his e-mail. "I believe you have every right to be proud of it."

We are proud of the Baghdad bureau, whose chief, Leila Fadel, recently won a prestigious George Polk award for international reporting. Last fall, six women who work in our Baghdad bureau were recognized by the International Women's Media Foundation for their courage and accomplishment.

The Bee and its readers gained access to these journalists and an expanded Washington reporting and editing team when McClatchy bought Knight Ridder nearly two years ago.

Led by David Westphal, the combined staffs have two main missions: regional coverage for McClatchy's 31 daily papers, and national and international reporting, which is distributed to those newspapers and worldwide through news services and the Web.

Before the Iraq war, the Knight Ridder bureau's national staff produced stories that raised questions about the intelligence supporting the administration's decision to attack.

More recently, reporter Warren Strobel and others have done notable work sorting out what's known and what is only speculation regarding Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities and aspirations.

The bureau's work stands out for impact, but it also gets noticed among journalists. This month, three McClatchy reporters (including former Bee journalist Margaret Talev) won a national Scripps Howard Foundation award for Washington reporting for stories exposing political influence in the Bush administration's firings of United States attorneys.

Prizes, of course, only recognize good work. The work itself – original, independent reporting and commentary – matters most to readers.

Check out the Washington bureau site at news.mcclatchy.com or the "Inside Iraq" blog itself, at washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq and let me know what you think.

About the writer:

• Reach The Bee's editor, Melanie Sill, at (916) 321-1002.