From Baghdad with love

If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to read Anne Barnard and Thanassis Cambanis’s tale of love amid the terror, which was the cover story of yesterday’s Boston Globe Magazine. It is that exceedingly rare example of a feature story that seems too short. Barnard and Cambanis did yeoman’s work covering what was supposed to be the post-war period in Iraq, only to chronicle the tale of a promising beginning that devolved into kidnappings and suicide bombings.

What I particularly like about their magazine story is that they integrate their romance and marriage into a larger narrative of what went wrong in Iraq. In their hands, the personal never seems forced or inappropriate. Rather, it’s a way of illuminating the bigger story.

The article is accompanied by a photo gallery that includes a few shots not available in print. As is the case with many publications, the Globe Magazine (and the paper as a whole) are getting better at offering multimedia options online to supplement what’s in print.

A particularly impressive example of this was the magazine’s three-part feature last spring on the Charlestown High School boys basketball team: click here, and you’ll find not just the story, but a slide show narrated by the reporter, Neil Swidey. The dilemma, of course, is that the online version ends up being more compelling than the print version. But that’s a problem facing the entire media business.