BlackFive

The Milblog Wire functions like any other wire service, aggregating stories from the field and making them available for your readership. The difference is now the stories come direct from folks the American public has a high degree of trust in, not an overseas stringer.

We have a very talented group of writers that have agreed to help launch this service and it reads like a Who's Who of the best Milblogs. Our goal is to offer news outlets a fresh source for stories that have been ignored by the national and international media.

Tim Kelley, Managing Editor of the Wisconsin State Journal, answered a reader unhappy with the one-sided coverage of the war by explaining he'd be happy to run stories about the other side of the war, but none come across his wire services.

Exactly! Yet I read about the good that has been accomplished every day, because I get my information on Iraq from the troops with boots on the ground. The reporters sit in hotels in the Green Zone making no effort to cover stories in the majority of the country where people are living happy and free. They wait for the next explosion and send a stringer out to ask for a body count, then fire off a dispatch about the increasing violence. Our writers patrol the streets every day, they interact with Iraqis, they laugh with children, they bring supplies to schools, they offer medical help, they make a difference. Then they head back to a base and in their off time they tell us about it, well those of us who are listening.

We hope to get many more people listening, because NEWSFLASH, it's not all bad over there. Here is a perfect example:

Abu Ghraib has been the symbol of all that is wrong about the war effort, featured everywhere incessantly as proof of our inhumanity. Currently Abu Ghraib is home to a hospital that we built, outfitted, trained up an Iraqi staff for, and turned over to them. Somehow this has managed to elude the attention of any of the hundreds of outlets that ran the Hooded Prisoner image. We offer a look at what we did to make amends, to make things better, and the American people deserve that same chance.

The site is up at Milblog Wire, and I am proud to announce that the following are participating as anchor members:

Active Military Members

Mudville Gazette- Mr. & Mrs.Greyhawk
CounterColumn- Jason Van Steenwyck
Sgt Hook
TF Boggs
American Citizen Soldier- Buck Sargent

Chairborne Rangers (Former military & industry experts)

Blackfive- Matt
Winds Of Change- Joe Katzman & Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger
Jim "Uncle Jimbo" Hanson

Myself excluded, that is a very impressive and widely read group, but our strength is numbers.

I now throw the floor open to all Milbloggers, if you want in or know of someone writing quality stories, let me know. There are more than 1,000 listed at Milblogging.com, and we have many folks already picked out, and I would love to hear from anyone with Wisconsin ties. This is the anti-elite in action, we are the Army of Davids Glenn Reynolds wrote about. Technology-empowered legions of first person reporters, and these come with much higher credibility and the trust of the American people.

The arrangements are simple. This is a personal initiative, however I will use my professional contacts to further it. I work for Capital Newspapers, which publishes two papers here in Madison, WI, we are part of a larger company Lee Enterprises which publishes 58 papers in the US. We have offered this service to all of them as a way to get stories their readers would be interested in, and haven't heard. If they use them in print or online I will get the authors paid. All I ask is an email saying we can rep your stories to the newspapers, all I promise is to try to get them published and definitely to get you paid if they are. Once we have any traction, we will donate a percentage to Soldier's Angels to help their amazing efforts.

If you are a reader of any of these fine blogs, then contact your local paper and tell them to add the Milblog Wire service. It costs them nothing unless they print or post a whole piece and we expect only fair freelance writing compensation. The whole point is to get the news Americans aren't seeing in front of them.

My email is below if you have questions or would like more information.

[email protected]