From Kicklines to Frontlines: Campbell Robertson Off to Iraq
MORE Off the Record
Campbell Robertson, the dogged Times journalist who has worked his way up from office clerk to gossip reporter to Broadway-beat man, is headed to Iraq.
“We were out last night and he was picking my brain on Iraq,” said Times Baghdad bureau chief Jim Glanz in a telephone interview on June 17. “He said that people have been asking him when he’s going to Iraq. And he said he’ll go once the Tonys are over!”
In some ways, it’s unbelievable that a man who wrote a story for Monday’s Times recapping the Tonys—for instance, he wrote that the awards tried to “goose ratings” by including more numbers from Rent this year—is going to be filing with Basra and Mosul datelines before old story subjects are back from the Hamptons.
“Look, he’s an untraditional war correspondent the way a lot of us are,” said Mr. Glanz, who was a science writer before leaving for Baghdad four years ago. “He’s coming from a different background and point of view from everyone else there. And right now, we can use some fresh ideas and perspectives.”
Mr. Robertson, who declined to comment for this item, will start on a rotation in Baghdad in the beginning of July at a time (as The Observer documented last week) when the story is falling from the front page of newspapers more and more, and when newspapers are having to find more young reporters to fill positions in their Baghdad bureaus.
“We’re taking a really strategic approach to writing about it,” said Susan Chira, the paper’s foreign editor, in a recent interview. “Sure, in 2004 the place was blowing up, and things are calmer now, but there are different stories. We’re completely committed, and we don’t think it’s going away.”
She said that Mr. Robertson was “a terrific writer and dogged reporter and we look forward to his time in Iraq.”
Mr. Robertson’s Times story is the one that supposedly doesn’t happen anymore outside of an Arthur Gelb memoir. He started as a clerk, which depending on whom you ask is either a foot in the door or the first step toward podiatric surgery. But he pitched aggressively and pushed his way into the 8-i reporting program. His breakthrough job: lead writer for the now defunct Boldface Names column in the Metro report.
“I just ignored what everybody was saying for so long,” Mr. Robertson told The Observer in 2005, when he was promoted to lead the column. “It might have been wildly inadvisable.”
jkoblin@observer.com
This is a JOKE right? Lara Logan was on the Daily Show last night and said she would shoot herself if she had to watch/read American News. This is an example of these bastards not really caring about the quality of reporting from he War Zone. Keep us dumb, so we'll fight amongst ourselves and not realize that the real evil Elites running our Media, Govt, and Corporations are to blame for squandering our country's resources. I'm sure the people at the Times will have fun eating their 150 dollar burgers while the rest of us can't leave our homes
Why do you assume he will be a rubbish war reporter? From everything this article stated this man started from zero and cares enough about journalism to do anything to get to actually report. Good for him.
On the other hand your explosive angry rant against him, a rant that is unsubstantiated by any actual short comings in his reporting is, I think, more indicative of the general bombastic stupidity that is what we should try to avoid in the media and in our government.
Where do you think War Reporters come from? War Reporter Trees? If you are against elites running the media then you should applaud the fact that this guy isn't some twerp who went to Dartmouth and then did Journalism at some top school. This is a guy that started from the bottom and through his commitment to journalism has earned the right to report about something important.
So yeah. Good luck being a reporter in Iraq.
Life imitates fiction! There's an excellent book called "Last One In" by Nicholas Kulish. It's about a NY gossip columnist who ends up embedded with a Marine unit at the start of the Iraq War. Really well done, not a farcical book at all.
are you kidding? it was a gossip columnist! this is not some small top cops reporter who went to a medium size newspaper and then got to the Times. This is an example of the Times not taking this topic seriously enough and far too limited to a demographic NYC bubble that war is more theatre than tactics, human, blood and passion and politics. There are a 100 cops reporters, or metro reporters, or investigative reporters who would ache for this job, have worked harder, with harder news... it's an insult to all of them and more so, an insult to readers who may still be naive or quixotic enough to want the Times to be a bit fair, to be the paper of record, to tell stories as best they can be told...
Isn't the obvious comparison with Frank Rich, who spent 13 years as the NY Times theater critic before taking up op-ed duties? There is no reason to suspect that a smart guy who writes well can't do an excellent job in Iraq.
Feel sorry for anyone who goes over there. Take good care, Mr. Robertson.
http://healinganation.wordpress.com/
Come on people. You all leave comments here like you are qualified to report from Iraq yourselves. The guy obviously wants the job and seems to have earned the chance. I was a journalist. Began as a sportswriter because it was the only job available not because I didn't know anything about political science.
This is certainly much less shocking than an illiterate ex-cheerleader and failed oil executive becoming president of the United States.
Ignorance is bliss. It's pretty common at daily newspapers, even the Times, to rotate reporters to different sections that they may or may not have expertise in. the idea is that being a journalism means you can apply reporting to any situation and come away with a good story. In fact, most of the reporters who are covering Iraq started out in the Metro section like Robertson did; the main difference is that they didn't have to do the gossip beat, because that was a experimental column for the Times. Robertson has also done 'regular' city reporting on the Metro desk; look in the archives. It's pretty normal for a daily to operate this way. Educate yourselves.
this is nothing new. louise roug, the former la times gossip columnist, served in baghdad. she was among the lat baghdad team nominated for a pulitzer in 2007 and overseas press club award in 2006 for lat iraq coverage. blah, blah, blah -- you new yorkers think you're so special.
What happens if he doesn't like the war?
Hey, He'll probably do well. All the world's a stage. Besides, eventually this war will be fodder for entertainment like WW2 and Vietnam. ...Not so amazing if you watch The Military and History Channel.
Unlike theatre, however, there will be real blood.
This is great news -- he'll give the war a bad review and they'll have to close it!
"Isn't the obvious comparison with Frank Rich, who spent 13 years as the NY Times theater critic before taking up op-ed duties? There is no reason to suspect that a smart guy who writes well can't do an excellent job in Iraq."
Please provide incontrovertible evidence that Frank Rich is "smart." No one in his right mind would get that impression based on the all of the verifiably wrong excuses-for-columns Richie-Rich has phoned in to the Times over the years.
Frankie-Goes-to-42nd-Street should have just stuck to doing what he does best: dishing out savage, catty theater reviews while simultanously slumming at trendy discos with off-Broadway chorus boys.
I'd trust the general public to get the Iraq story right before I would a theater critic. This Times decision is really terrible. Why not hire someone who has a background in Iraq and/or US politics: someone who could bring not just a "fresh perspective" to Iraq reporting, but who could bring a perspective informed by knowledge of history and politics? I also was a journalist, and I found that most journalists do not have any such background, and so journalists by and large end up repeating the official line. That's the kind of thing that resulted in media support for the war to begin with.
This is the liberal media at best! Since America is now winning in Iraq (much to the annoyance of liberals)they are downgrading the "Iraq story" to a musical.
Keep us in the dark or should I say the glaring spotlight till the end of the election so that we can begin the process of defeat and the end of America.
I hope this dude proves all of you nay-sayers wrong. He's a journalist. Sure, there are MASTERS programs where you can specialize in a specific type of writing, but if you have a general concern for what's happening in the world, you can be a news journalist. As a journalist myself, I've found myself having to write features, dance pieces, sports stories, columns, editorials and news stories. Though hard news is my specialty, all I have to do is hone my other writing skills for the time being whenever I write another type of piece. I agree with Anonymous who posted at June 18, 2008 11:07 AM. You all are too quick to assume he's "rubbish." Give the guy a chance. While the Times have made bad decisions before - must I bring up the McCain story from the winter when they ran unnamed sources in the midst of the primaries? - the paper isn't run by inexperienced people. I'm sure they thought about this decision. So he may be more of an arts reporter, the reasons for being a journalist is A) informing the public and B) always learning something new.
I hope this dude proves all of you nay-sayers wrong. He's a journalist. Sure, there are MASTERS programs where you can specialize in a specific type of writing, but if you have a general concern for what's happening in the world, you can be a news journalist. As a journalist myself, I've found myself having to write features, dance pieces, sports stories, columns, editorials and news stories. Though hard news is my specialty, all I have to do is hone my other writing skills for the time being whenever I write another type of piece. I agree with Anonymous who posted at June 18, 2008 11:07 AM. You all are too quick to assume he's "rubbish." Give the guy a chance. While the Times have made bad decisions before - must I bring up the McCain story from the winter when they ran unnamed sources in the midst of the primaries? - the paper isn't run by inexperienced people. I'm sure they thought about this decision. So he may be more of an arts reporter, the reasons for being a journalist is A) informing the public and B) always learning something new.
C'mon, how much experience do you really need to sit in the green zone and hire Iraqi stringers? It's not like he's going to be allowed into the field to do any real reporting.
I'm willing to bet Robertson covers Iraq far more thoroughly and accurately than Judith Miller ever did, with her credulous accounts about WMDs, attributed to Curveball and fed to her by Scooter Libby.
And for those drawing comparisons with Frank Rich, Arthur Gelb, and "Last One In," I recommend Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh. A British gardening columnist is mistakenly sent to a fictional African country, where he ends up getting the scoop on an incipient coup.
I agree with those who argue the guy deserves a chance. After all, how do you become a war correspondent but by reporting from a war zone? He'll have a learning curve but so does any reporter going to a war zone for the first time. Note Glanz's comments about untraditional war reporters, too. He'll succeed or he won't. Hopefully he'll do some good reporting, be suitably skeptical of official spin and get home in one piece.
That said, his paper had better step up now with a clear, declarative, unambiguous statement that he's a good reporter who's done well at every beat they've put him on. The last thing they need is to put him at an instant disadvantage going into one of the most difficult and dangerous assignments any reporter could take on.
“He said that people have been asking him when he’s going to Iraq. And he said he’ll go once the Tonys are over!”
Sorry, that comment is fairly embrassing.
I know Campbell. He's a very smart guy, a thorough reporter, and a superb writer. He will do well wherever he goes.
having reported for an extended period of time from iraq, i would welcome the insight of any reporter coming from a different background. anyone willing to head to iraq - or even say they would go - deserves some credit. bit self serving to say that, but there you go.
as for this guy going to sit in the green zone, as one commenter mentioned, that is patently absurd. the NYT (i don't report for them) leads the charge in terms of western journalists getting out into the thick of things. they go where no other major western journos are going in iraq. campbell will be no different, i'm sure.
best of luck and welcome to the club.
Let me guess: Mr. Robertson graduated Ivy League and has an uncle or mother in journalism? The eds. always promote those who can boost them up the social ladder.