At the NYT noted today, Afghanistan is no longer "The Forgotten War."

More news organizations, including McClatchy, are devoting increasing time, people and resources to covering "Obama's War." (Frontline recently aired a widely praised feature on Afghanistan...)

The increased coverage comes as US soldiers and NATO forces are facing increasing dangers in Afghanistan. And that, in turn, means increased dangers for reporters covering the story.

Last month, New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell (a veteran war reporter, formerly with The Times of London, who was based in Jerusalem for years) was kidnapped by the Taliban, held for four days, and freed by British forces in a raid that ended with the shooting death of Stephen's Afghan colleague, Sultan Munadi.

Steve described his kidnapping in the NYT last month.

Around the same time, McClatchy reporter Jonathan Landay was out on patrol with US and Afghan forces when they walked into a Taliban ambush. Four Americans and nine Afghans were killed in the fighting. At one point, a Marine tossed Jonathan a wounded soldier's M-4 and told him: "This is your rifle now."

This week, the NYT is publishing a five-part series, Held by the Taliban, by reporter David Rohde, who was kidnapped with two Afghan colleagues and held for seven months.

In Part One, Rohde describes the initial abduction while en route to a meeting a Taliban commander near Kabul.

In Part Two, he describes being spirited over the border into Pakistan and a revelation about his kidnappers.

A recent story in The Onion joked that most newspapers these days are bought by kidnappers to prove the date in hostage videos.

The tales of the NYT reporters are much more sobering.

And they are another reminder that, in most cases, getting front-line news on the most difficult foreign policy challenges is not done by bloggers scouring the Internet; it is done by reporters like Stephen Farrell, David Rohde and Jonathan Landay who risk their lives to tell the stories, even when all our news organizations are facing severe financial challenges.