When reporters write in the first person, the result is rarely good. There are exceptions (such as Peter Kann’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the war in Bangladesh in 1971 for the Wall Street Journal), but the exceptions tend to prove the rule. Take today’s New York Times dispatch from Basra.

Today’s coverage of the Iraqi government’s fight for Basra is a clear example of the rule.

First of all, who is Qais Mizher, who owns the byline on the piece? Well, he tells us this in passing: “Calling on my experience as a captain in the Iraqi Army before the 2003 invasion and essentially a war correspondent since then…” Got that? The New York Times reporter was an officer in Saddam’s army. Nice. By the way, officers were not drafted (that’s how the enlisted ranks were filled). Officers had to be selected and regularly vetted for loyalty and effectiveness. So Saddam decided that he could trust our intrepid correspondent and so did the New York Times.

Makes you wonder: Would the Times have hired former Nazi officers to cover the three-year insurgency against the American presence in Germany in the late 1940s? Even if they spoke the language, knew the countryside well and said they “never really believed” in that evil ideology?

And is it smart to send an Iraqi Army captain from the Saddam era to cover the actions of the new Iraqi army? Are they likely to welcome him? Is likely to view them fairly?

But the bigger problem with this piece is that it tells the reader nothing. It is simply a traveleogue meant to convey that Basra is a dangerous and confusing place. The reporter makes no attempt to clarify anything. He does not interview any Iraqi army officers, whom, he admits, are holed up 50 feet from his hotel.

Nor does he interview the hotel staff or his two taxi drivers.

He just hears some gunshots and sees some shattered glass. Sounds like a night in Detroit. But it tells us nothing we didn’t already know: there is fighting in Basra. Frankly, there are bloggers who do better than this. Much better. See Michael Yon or Michael Totten.

As for his statement that the Mahdi Army can strike anywhere in Basra and the Iraqi Army really controls nothing, well, how would he know? He is not quoting an expert, say a American or Iraqi commander with access to maps and satellite imagery that shows the Mahdi Army striking at will across the metropolis. He cites no independent named source at all. He just retails Mahdi Army propaganda as fact.

This is Seinfeld reporting—“news” about nothing.

As for the New York Times, one wonders why they didn’t embed a reporter with the Iraqi forces streaming south. Like Dr. Zaius, were they afraid of what they might find?