Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

2003. Reports from Iraq filed via satellite

As the U.S. infantry moved through the Iraqi desert toward Baghdad in March 2003, Journal reporter Michael Corkery was a half a world and 140 years away from the battlefield correspondents of the U.S. Civil War. But a common bond united him with those 19th-century journalists: Both used the latest technology of their day to bring the war home to newspaper readers.

Where the telegraph carried news from Bull Run and Gettysburg, Corkery's tools included a satellite modem that connected his laptop computer to the Internet. He wrote stories on the laptop -- sometimes huddled beneath his sleeping bag so snipers could not see the light from the computer screen. He took pictures with a digital camera. The laptop transmitted his stories and pictures over the Internet to Providence.

Corkery also had a satellite telephone to talk with editors.

Corkery was embedded with the 7th Regiment of the 2nd Batallion of the 3rd Infantry Division, meaning he was essentially an unarmed member of the unit, experiencing nearly everything the soldiers did.

The 2-7, as the unit was called, had a home base in Georgia, where The Journal's Web site found wide readership from families of the soldiers in the 2-7. Some even sent e-mail through Corkery to the soldiers, who were cut off from normal communications with home during the fighting.