I do have an update in the works on what the hell I’ve been doing with my time of late, but first I feel obligated to link to this sad news for my employer from Iraq, where Salih Saif Aldin has earned the unfortunate distinction of becoming the first Washington Post correspondent killed during the ongoing war.

A divorced father of a 6-year-old daughter, he distinguished himself as one of the most fearless reporters in The Post’s Baghdad bureau. He began work for the paper in early 2004 as a stringer in his hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

In July 2005, he received a note threatening his life if he did not quit journalism and leave the city. He refused. “This is my city, and I’m a journalist,” he told colleagues.

Shortly after, he was attacked by two men, who beat him with their fists, a metal pipe and the butt of a pistol, leaving him with bruises all over his body and opening a gash in his head that required eight stitches. After he was released from the hospital, The Post implored him to leave Tikrit. When he refused, Omar Fekeiki, the newspaper’s former office manager and special correspondent, said he was told he would be fired if he didn’t leave.

Saif Aldin later moved to Baghdad, where he repeatedly braved the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, often traveling alone.

Sadly, Saif Aldin is but one of over 100 journalists killed since the beginning of the war in Iraq, and well over 600 in the past ten years. The next time someone spouts off on how the media are all cowards and refusing to report the truth or driven solely by agenda, feel free to point them to the above as an example of how wrong they truly are.