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Writing for Danger Room has been a liberating experience, especially for someone who comes from the rather stodgy world of defense trade reporting. It's fun to try out a new format, even if it sometimes means playing bratty younger brother to serious-minded national-security reporters.
But my post on the relationship between reporters and think tanks – particularly the Center for a New American Security, or CNAS, which has helped fund book projects by some prominent journalists – seems to have touched a nerve. In part, some people read the post as implying that there was something, well, improper about journalists taking book leave at a think tank.
Greg Jaffe, a Washington Post reporter and co-author of The Fourth Star, said the tone of the post may have created the wrong impression. "CNAS had zero control or influence over the book's content," he wrote me in an e-mail. "We got a small travel stipend ($5,000 each) and office space, but that was it."
That's a fair point to add. I respect Jaffe's work, and his integrity isn't in question. In fact, I think reporters need to be more entrepreneurial, so good on him for persuading CNAS to help support his project. In an era of declining newsroom budgets, journalists have to look for all kinds of ways to fund in-depth reporting, from travel grants (been there) to book advances (done that).
Tom Ricks, now a senior fellow at CNAS, also weighed in on my comment about the potentially awkward situation of reporters sharing cubicles with policy wonks. "I wasn't sure what the argument of the piece was," he wrote. "Your 'awkward' seems to imply that reporters (which I am not anymore) might curtail comments or criticisms for fear of crossing the person in the next office. That's hardly the case at CNAS, where we have had some pretty robust disagreements about Iraq, Afghanistan, and other issues. CNAS doesn't take institutional positions, so that is hardly a problem."
I think I know what Ricks means when he says he's not a reporter anymore: It means he's not a newspaper reporter, which requires rigorous separation from opinion writing. But like it or not, Ricks still breaks news on his blog, which is also laced with commentary, humor and dog stories.
Which gets to my second point: Our process. I was also scolded for not doing the "reporterly" thing and contacting every journo I mentioned in the post. That approach works for a newspaper or a magazine, not so much for web 2.0. We put something out there, get reactions, then refine. Take the case of my first post on think tanks: It provoked an outpouring of responses, including a very thoughtful reaction from Andrew Exum, CNAS blogger emeritus. The whole point was to start a conversation, not provide all the answers.
That's the marvelous thing about the blog format. Sometimes we get to write deeply researched, heavily documented stories. Other times, we'll post a quick hit – occasionally with a splash of haterade. But most importantly, we get to write in a way that is free of what the late, lamented eXile referred to as the "Bigfoot exists/Bigfoot my ass" style of news writing that often seems to make newspapers as bland and neutral as a Congressional Research Service report.
