I wanted to post this item while war coverage was still raging, but technical difficulties had their way. It's from a New York Observer profile of CNN anchor Aaron Brown, who was one of the few to comment on how pointless and overwrought much of the round-the-clock war coverage was (and doesn't it seem even more pointless now--at least all the endless armchair quarterbacking about what would happen next?)

Aaron Brown can be the Midnight Rambler. He knows this.

"There are times-I have had moments-where there was nothing," Mr. Brown said from the CNN Center in Atlanta the other day. "We had no place to go. There was no guest booked. There was no embed phoning in. My preference in that moment is to say, 'Let's everybody have a quiet six minutes.' But that is not an option. There is only one option-that's to talk. And I'm sitting there and my left brain is going, 'God, just shut up.'"

He wasn't the only one, though he wins points for his candor. Here are my favorite two essays on war coverage, from the New Yorker and Sports Illustrated.