Covering Wars And Writing About It In Today's World Of New Media

Brian Turner in Mosul during his service as an infantry team leader in Iraq, which later inspired a collection of poetry. Tom Bosch

A Well-Written War, Told in the First Person -- New York Times

WASHINGTON — Brian Turner was focused on staying alive, not poetry, when he served as an infantry team leader in Iraq. But he quickly saw that his experience — “a year of complete boredom punctuated by these very intense moments” — lent itself to the tautness of verse.

The result was a collection called “Here, Bullet,” with a title poem inspired by Mr. Turner’s realization during combat patrols that he was bait to lure the enemy.

If a body is what you want,

then here is bone and gristle and flesh,

... because here, Bullet,

here is where the world ends, every time.

Read more ....

My Comment: From blogs, new and old media, web and print ... more has been written on the Afghan and Iraq wars than (probably) all other wars combined. Just for War News Updates, I estimate that over 5,000 entries that focus on the Afghan/Iraq wars have been published in the past few years, and this does not included contributions that I have done for other blogs and media outlets.

But what excites me even more is the impact that social networking sites like Facebook will have in covering and writing about wars. A good example of this is Michael Yon's facebook page .... a frontline observer who writes eloquently about his experiences and observations in Afghanistan. This is coverage and reporting that would have been impossible to dream about when the Afghan campaign stated in 2001 .... but in todays world this is regarded as common.