Young reporters sometimes come to me for advice about working in the Middle East. In years past, I would tell them that this was an excellent idea: save some money, go learn Arabic, be a newspaper stringer, grab for the big stories, and you’ll have an interesting life. Steven Sotloff was one of those who sought my advice. His Middle East career was already under way (he was living in Israel at the time), and I prefer to think that he could not have been dissuaded.No doubt he prefers to think that way because thinking otherwise--and thinking himself at least partly responsible for Sotloff's ghastly fate--would be too hard to live with.
In any case, Goldberg thinks he knows why the jihadis are no longer willing to tolerate the presence of his ilk:
For one thing, the extremists have become more extreme. Look at the fractious relationship between al-Qaeda and ISIS, which is an offshoot of al-Qaeda but which has rejected criticism from Qaeda leaders about its particularly baroque application of violence.
Another, more important, reason relates to the mechanisms of publicity itself. The extremists don’t need us anymore. Fourteen years ago, while I was staying at the Taliban madrasa, its administrators were launching a Web site. I remember being amused by this. I shouldn’t have been. There is no need for a middleman now. Journalists have been replaced by YouTube and Twitter. And when there is no need for us, we become targets. ...Could be a tad simplistic but still makes a lot of sense to me.
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