The Daily News, Jacksonville NC

"Roster of American Combat Heroes"

Lisa Hoffman, writing for Scripps Howard, has composed an article called "Roster of American combat heroes in Iraq is rich." JHD sent it to me to fold into my morning reading, and I'm glad I did.

By rights this type of article should be a major focus of journalism. It's the kind of thing people love to read, so it sells newspapers. It makes people feel good, so it sells newspapers. It also happens to be true and important, which also sells newspapers.

Yet we rarely see it, and almost never as front-page items. Readers of the MilBlogs know that these things are not rare news; the occasional roundup item, such as this one, has a wealth to pull from, and they can only scratch the surface. One would almost think that newspapers weren't primarily interested in selling their product, but in trying to influence politics.

That might help to explain certain recent sales figures.