Filmmaker J.D. Johannes, a former Marine, arrived in Iraq in 2005 intent on shooting footage he could sell to local news stations across the country. He got credentialed to cover his old Marine unit.

“I got a list of zip codes of reserve Marines, and I went to those media markets. I sold them a simple concept - how often do you have coverage of the war on your station? How often do you have the local tie in?” he says.

He was able to provide stations with footage of hometown soldiers on the job in Iraq.

His time in the war-torn country showed Johannes that in some areas bloggers outnumber members of the mainstream media.

One explanation comes down to cost. It’s cheaper to have an editor and a handful of writers stationed in Baghdad and use stringers to fill in the gaps than to have a whole news crew scattered across the country, he says.

“An army of stringers can churn out copy,” he says. This ugly truth “does a great disserve to the consumer. What a person knows about Iraq comes from the news media. They’re making decisions on their viewpoint of the war based on that."

It’s one reason why he returned to Iraq last year, risking life and limb while accompanying U.S. soldiers. You can see how dicey it got for him in his “Outside the Wire” documentary.

Selling “Wire” DVDs has taken a guerilla-style marketing effort.

Conservative bloggers and talk show hosts, eager to promote an Iraq documentary that doesn’t regularly bash the war effort and/or the current administration, have certainly helped.

“Our friends in the blogosphere, like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds, have done the lion’s share of work for us,“ he says.

“I like the biz model of hip hop and rap musicians,“ he says. “You can make a CD pretty cheap and distribute it yourself.“

Tomorrow: Johannes shares some lessons he’s learned about the war in Iraq.

(Photo: A soldier takes aim during "Outside the Wire" - photo credit: J.D. Johannes)

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