Nice Work if You Can Read It

Rocky Mountain News columnist Linda Seebach emailed to let me know her paper is doing a much better job covering Iraq than the New York Times.

(Actually, Linda was too modest to put it that way, but she needn’t be. Anyway.)

Bill Johnson has an excellent story from inside Baghdad:

I expected none of this.

We were shot at not even once. Never in the nearly nine hours we have spent walking and driving through the streets of this city did anyone flash as much as a cap pistol at us.

This is not the Baghdad everyone has told us to fear, the one they for months have shown on television at home. Not a single car exploded. There were no dead bodies that needed to be stepped over.

Make no mistake, though, this is a hard city, a trash-strewn and dusty, car-choked sprawl unlike anything you likely have ever seen up close. There is absolutely nothing glamorous or lovely here, only wildly different levels of utter poverty.

Read the whole thing; it’s fascinating stuff.

There’s also a slideshow from photojournalist Todd Heisler, including shots of the protest yesterday.

Pretty fine work for folks from “flyover country,” eh?

UPDATE: At long last, I’ve gotten around to playing catch-up with Linda’s columns at RMN. She’s good. Very good. So now you’ll find her blogrolled with the other paid pundits under “Cover Charge.”