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Pen & Sword: A Journalist's Guide to Covering the Military
Helps journalists understand military basics, how to organize a military beat, the protocol for interviewing military personnel, and many other issues.
- GenresJournalism
312 pages, Paperback
First published November 19, 2001
4 people want to read
About the author
Ed Offley
7 books8 followersEd Offley has been a military reporter for over 30 years in a wide variety of journalism assignments throughout the United States, including newspaper reporting and editorial writing, and online editing and commentary. Since 2006, he has worked full-time as an author focusing on military history topics.
His military reporting career spanned the final decade of the Cold War, including the Reagan administration’s defense buildup of the 1980s and American interventions in Lebanon, Grenada and Panama; the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; the outbreak of mass violence in the Balkans; and major U.S. military interventions in the Middle East including Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
During that time, he covered military operations and exercises in eighteen countries. These included the 1989 American intervention in Panama; the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s historic 1990 visit to the Soviet Union at Vladivostok; the 1991 Operation Desert Storm offensive to liberate Kuwait, and the 1992 U.S. intervention in Somalia. Other assignments have included a major U.S. Navy fleet exercise in the Bering Sea in 1987; the U.S. Air Force’s 1989 mid-winter airdrop of supplies to the South Pole Base Camp, and a reporting trip to the border village of Panmunjom in 1994 during a period of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Throughout his career, Offley practiced hands-on coverage of the military. This included coverage of naval fleet exercises at sea from the central Pacific to the Atlantic and Caribbean. He participated in training maneuvers with the U.S. Army in Alaska, Washington state, southern California and Puerto Rico. He qualified for flight in Navy and Air Force tactical jet aircraft, flying as an observer in a number of warplanes, including the B-52H, A-6E, CF-18, F-5E and EA-6B. He flew with both the Navy’s Blue Angels and Air Force’s Thunderbirds, logged over 300,000 miles of flight with the Air Mobility Command worldwide, and made over a dozen aircraft carrier landings and takeoffs. He spent four days submerged in the Trident submarine USS Nevada and three days inside an even more cramped M1A1 Abrams tank
His investigative reporting regularly produced headline-generating disclosures. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in beat reporting in 1996 for articles on a brain-injured former Army soldier who was released from a civilian jail and had his veterans benefits restored as a result of the coverage revealing a faulty Army medical diagnosis of the soldier’s condition. His disclosure of a Top Secret plan to use trained dolphins as security guards at the Bangor Submarine Base triggered a federal lawsuit by animal-rights groups that stopped the program in its tracks. His revelation that retired Navy Warrant Officer John Walker’s espionage for the KGB had allowed Soviet submarines to penetrate American and Canadian coastal waters sparked a parliamentary hearing in Canada.
In addition to his published works, Ed Offley has long worked to improve the quality of military reporting in American journalism. In 2001, his military reporting manual, Pen & Sword: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering the Military (Marion Street Press, Oak Park, IL), received widespread praise by reviewers. The American Journalism Review called the manual “especially valuable” to reporters who found themselves covering military subjects on short notice. He also was a founding director of Military Reporters & Editors Association, a professional group committed to improving the quality of military reporting in the American news media.
A 1969 graduate of the University of Virginia, Ed served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Midway. He and his wife, Karen Conrad, live in Panama City Beach, Fla. They have two adult daughters, Elaine and Andrea.
His military reporting career spanned the final decade of the Cold War, including the Reagan administration’s defense buildup of the 1980s and American interventions in Lebanon, Grenada and Panama; the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; the outbreak of mass violence in the Balkans; and major U.S. military interventions in the Middle East including Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
During that time, he covered military operations and exercises in eighteen countries. These included the 1989 American intervention in Panama; the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s historic 1990 visit to the Soviet Union at Vladivostok; the 1991 Operation Desert Storm offensive to liberate Kuwait, and the 1992 U.S. intervention in Somalia. Other assignments have included a major U.S. Navy fleet exercise in the Bering Sea in 1987; the U.S. Air Force’s 1989 mid-winter airdrop of supplies to the South Pole Base Camp, and a reporting trip to the border village of Panmunjom in 1994 during a period of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Throughout his career, Offley practiced hands-on coverage of the military. This included coverage of naval fleet exercises at sea from the central Pacific to the Atlantic and Caribbean. He participated in training maneuvers with the U.S. Army in Alaska, Washington state, southern California and Puerto Rico. He qualified for flight in Navy and Air Force tactical jet aircraft, flying as an observer in a number of warplanes, including the B-52H, A-6E, CF-18, F-5E and EA-6B. He flew with both the Navy’s Blue Angels and Air Force’s Thunderbirds, logged over 300,000 miles of flight with the Air Mobility Command worldwide, and made over a dozen aircraft carrier landings and takeoffs. He spent four days submerged in the Trident submarine USS Nevada and three days inside an even more cramped M1A1 Abrams tank
His investigative reporting regularly produced headline-generating disclosures. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in beat reporting in 1996 for articles on a brain-injured former Army soldier who was released from a civilian jail and had his veterans benefits restored as a result of the coverage revealing a faulty Army medical diagnosis of the soldier’s condition. His disclosure of a Top Secret plan to use trained dolphins as security guards at the Bangor Submarine Base triggered a federal lawsuit by animal-rights groups that stopped the program in its tracks. His revelation that retired Navy Warrant Officer John Walker’s espionage for the KGB had allowed Soviet submarines to penetrate American and Canadian coastal waters sparked a parliamentary hearing in Canada.
In addition to his published works, Ed Offley has long worked to improve the quality of military reporting in American journalism. In 2001, his military reporting manual, Pen & Sword: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering the Military (Marion Street Press, Oak Park, IL), received widespread praise by reviewers. The American Journalism Review called the manual “especially valuable” to reporters who found themselves covering military subjects on short notice. He also was a founding director of Military Reporters & Editors Association, a professional group committed to improving the quality of military reporting in the American news media.
A 1969 graduate of the University of Virginia, Ed served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Midway. He and his wife, Karen Conrad, live in Panama City Beach, Fla. They have two adult daughters, Elaine and Andrea.
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