Part of a continuing series about the life of an embedded reporter in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ — Among reporters who have been in and out of Iraq since the beginning of the war, there seems to be a kind of consensus that the summer of 2003 and, to a much lesser extent, part of 2004, was a kind of golden period for reporting.

It was still possible then for Westerners to walk the streets of Baghdad, sit in restaurants and, most importantly, spend time with ordinary Iraqis. But as the insurgency became more violent, more brazen and more constant, reporters were forced to cut back on their forays into the city.

This isn’t to say they no longer go out. While I was in Baghdad, one reporter left her paper’s guarded compound to spend the night at an Iraqi family’s house to do some reporting, and everyone I spoke to said that they do get out a couple of times a week to work a story. Still, the situation being what it is, bureaus rely heavily on Iraqi stringers and fixers to go out and collect information for their stories. When Westerners do go out, they normally bring at least one armed Iraqi guard, and plan their trips as much as possible so that someone knows where they are, and how long they should be gone.

But it wasn’t always like this. A photographer I spoke to in Baghdad told me that at one point things were so lax that “we would drive to Fallujah for lunch and visit some tea shops, then drive back.” In the earlier stages of the war, some reporters even were able to end-run the official channels of the embedding process. The same photographer told me,...

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