This blog tends to focus on media criticism, but sometimes a news organization deserves praise for bringing balance to its coverage and using its superior resources to shed light on under-covered stories. Today, the WaPo makes up for the shoddy Dana Milbank column on page 2 with two articles that depart from the usual media story lines.

The first is “The Legal Woes of Rep. Jefferson” — a front-page look at a Democrat mired in scandal that punctures the notion, promoted by Democrats, that Republicans are the only ones with ethics problems:

The investigation of Jefferson and the recent guilty plea by a former aide give Republicans the chance to argue that corruption in Washington has a bipartisan tinge.
Republican groups frequently invoke the Jefferson case in defending their party from broad-brush charges of corruption. Even Public Citizen, a liberal consumer watchdog group, featured Jefferson on an “Ethics Hall of Shame” list recently.

The second article is “The Lessons of Counterinsurgency,” an article about how the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq has adopted a new approach to counterinsurgency, with successful results:

TALL AFAR, Iraq — The last time the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment served in Iraq, in 2003-04, its performance was judged mediocre, with a series of abuse cases growing out of its tour of duty in Anbar province.
But its second tour in Iraq has been very different, according to specialists in the difficult art of conducting a counterinsurgency campaign… In the last nine months, the regiment has focused on breaking the insurgents’ hold on Tall Afar, a town of 290,000. Their operations here “will serve as a case study in classic counterinsurgency, the way it is supposed to be done,” said Terry Daly, a retired intelligence officer specializing in the subject. […]
“Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy,” McMaster said he told every soldier in his command. He ordered his soldiers to stop using the term hajji as a slang term for all Iraqis, because he saw it as inaccurate and disrespectful. (It actually means someone who has made the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.)

At a time when the release of previously undisclosed Abu Ghraib photos has reopened an old wound, the Washington Post reports on how our troops are actually improving in the field and getting things right. Some blogs and periodicals are trying to get these stories out, but it sure helps when the WaPo picks them up.