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Q&A with embedded online war reporter

Many print and TV journalists covering the Iraq war filed stories for their organizations' Web sites, but Ben Arnoldy, a news producer for The Christian Science Monitor's Web site, was one of the few online journalists sent to Iraq. In a Q&A with CyberJournalist.net's Jonathan Dube, he describes what it was like to be embedded with an Air Force unit, what tools he used and what lessons he learned from the experience.

What was your assignment?

I was embedded with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, an Air Force unit stationed at an air base in Kuwait. The Monitor wanted me to file daily online dispatches and photos, as well as answer e-mails from readers.

My primary goal was to bring readers into the experience of military life during wartime.

Over the course of six weeks with the military I filed 35 dispatches and answered several dozens emails. I also filed a handful of stories for the print edition.

What was your typical day like?

By 7 a.m. the combination of the sun coming through the tent and the roar of jet engines would wake me up. After breakfast -- either cafeteria food in Kuwait or MREs in Iraq -- I would do my interviews and reporting. I usually spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon meeting with people and hanging out.

I would then head back to my laptop to write up the day�s dispatch, or if I was lucky, begin working on the next day�s. The longer I was over there, the more sand accumulated in the equipment. Frequently, the i, k, and comma keys would not register and I had to bang on them with my knuckles. After I (literally) banged out a dispatch, I would head outside and set up the satellite phone so I could email the copy back to Boston.

Generally, I tried to file before 4 - 5 p.m. when I would call the editors in Boston. Iraq is eight hours ahead of Boston, so they would be just arriving to work for the morning at that time. I would let them know how the dispatch went and pitch future dispatches.

After we got off the phone, the editors would read through the dispatch and then call back with edits. In the meantime, I would download the best photos from my digital camera, process them, and send them to Boston.

After edits, I would head to dinner. In the evening I would either watch the news or a movie, or I would continue interviewing or writing for the next day. I usually returned to the tent around midnight, checked for scorpions in the bedding, and turned in.

But, the days were never that simple. Getting around, whether across base or off base, required a lot of coordination and sweet-talking. Originally, the Air Force forbade us from having vehicles. Though the restriction eventually eased, it was too late for me to go back to Kuwait City to rent one. And sometimes filing with the satellite phone was simply impossible due to vicious sand storms.

What equipment did you bring with you? What did you wish you had?

Soldiers carry an enormous amount of gear, which they refer to as �battle rattle.� The journalists with them also had to shoulder more than the usual tools of the trade.

To do my work, I carried a satellite phone, laptop computer, digital camera, digital voice recorder, and local cell phone. But I wished I had brought some more of the low-tech essentials: I ran out of pens and reporter�s notebooks faster than I anticipated.

I also had to tote a lot of protective gear. When going into recently-taken villages in Iraq, I was glad to have a flak vest and helmet. On the Kuwaiti air base, the alarms warning of incoming missiles sounded about 10 times. For this reason, I had to keep my gas mask holstered on my waist wherever I went, and keep my chem.-bio suit close at hand.

Before I left Boston, my editors and I concluded that I shouldn�t try to bring audio and video equipment. The base alarms and the take-off roars on A-day would have been fascinating audio. And some endearing interactions between Marines and local kids in Nasiriya would have been touching video.

But, ultimately we made the right decision. It was crucial to be able to travel light when trying to hitch rides on C-130 flying between Kuwait and Iraq and on humvees heading off base into Iraqi towns. Also, transmission of audio and video realistically required a higher-speed satellite connection.

How did you, as an online reporter, cover the war differently from embedded print and television journalists?

We packaged the dispatches and reader questions in a mini-site. This made it easy for readers to follow my reports from the beginning -- or if they discovered the project later, go back and catch up. Readers could also sign up to receive the dispatches via e-mail.

So we were able to give readers a sense of a journey. It�s much harder to have that kind of experience in a newspaper or on television because there�s no convenient way to catch up on missed entries.

And we tried to play to this strength by having me write in the first person in the beginning to create a trusted narrator or guide. As time went on, I wrote less in the first person, but I always tried to write descriptively about the places and people so that readers would continue to feel like fellow travelers.

The other unique aspect of my coverage was answering reader e-mails�

You answered a lot of reader questions on the Christian Science Monitor's Web site. What did you learn from this process? How did reader questions differ from the types of questions you were asking and the stories you were otherwise writing?

The reader questions reminded me that people are interested in the experiences of the average GI Joes too, not just the top guns. Some of my colleagues hung out the entire time on the flight line and just interviewed pilots.

However, I didn�t receive any questions about pilots. Readers wanted to know about how soldiers kept in touch with loved ones, how they reacted to peace protests, what they did in their spare time. Striking up conversations in the dining hall turned out to be better source material for answering reader questions than going to the commander�s briefings or questioning returning pilots.

Interestingly, the most frequent question was how to send a care package to the troops. It impressed me with how much readers want to get involved beyond �keeping up with the news.� It reaffirmed for me that readers appreciate links to charities and help hotlines that we sometimes try to provide in times of tragedy or duress.

A fair number of questions dealt with journalistic issues. People wanted to know whether being embedded meant I would be paid by the government. Others wanted to know about the challenges of remaining objective. Embedding under the auspices of the Pentagon is an unusual position for a journalist to be in, and the questions gave me a chance to be transparent about that.

What did you learn from this experience -- in general, and specifically about online journalism?

I learned that most US troops are incredibly confident in their abilities, and I also could see for myself why.

In terms of online journalism, I learned how important it was to keep the design flexible for an assignment with this many unknowns.

Much of what we initially sketched out had to be changed. We originally planned for me to file six days a week. Weather, logistics, and sheer exhaustion prevented that from happening. As a result, we had to tweak a navigation pull-down that listed the dispatches by day. We had to pull a handy map of Kuwait after my fellow embeds and I learned that our dateline was supposed to be no more specific than: �AN AIR BASE IN THE ARABIAN GULF REGION.� (They later loosened up on this.) Even the title of the project, Assignment: Kuwait, had to be recast to Assignment: Iraq after I was unexpectedly able to move forward.

But, that said, the basic mission for the site stayed the same and proved successful. And given that this was our first foray into sending an online reporter abroad for an expended period of time, our biggest lesson was that we could do it and do it well.

RELATED FEATURE: Arnoldy won an Online Journalism Award last year for The Christian Science Monitor's 'Amtrak: All Aboard?' -- a wonderful multimedia look at Amtrak's troubles, incorporating audio, Weblogs and interactive maps. Read his essay for CyberJournalist.net on how csmonitor.com produced the package...

May 6, 2003 | BY JONATHAN DUBE

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