Michael Yon

If you want to know what's going on in Afghanistan, check out Michael Yon's Blog. Great photos, accurate reporting.

Michael Yon is an American author, independent reporter, columnist, photographer, and blogger. He served in the Special Forces in the early-1980s, one of the youngest soldiers to pass the Green Beret selection process, and he became a general freelance writer in the mid-1990s. He focused on military writing after the invasion of Iraq. Yon has been embedded on numerous occasions with American and British troops in Iraq, most prominently a deployment with the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (Deuce Four) of the 25th Infantry Division in Mosul, Iraq that ended in September 2005.

Yon's has had vocal feuds with the United States military hierarchy, and the nature of his reports are also controversial. However, Yon enjoys 'rock star' status among individual soldiers according to Brian Williams of MSNBC. Yon's alternative media reporting has been mentioned by numerous mainstream media agencies, and he has won accolades from the 2005, 2007, and 2008 Weblog Awards. In 2008, The New York Times reported that he has more spent time embedded with combat units than any other journalist in Iraq. He shifted from blogging from Iraq to blogging from Afghanistan in August 2008. His work is supported primarily by donations from readers.



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