Embedded in a new campaign

The Iraq war’s “embeds” -- journalists who lived and traveled with U.S. and British troops to produce up-close reports on their activities -- have spawned a “campaign embed” program at MSNBC. The cable news channel said it will send one-person video-journalists, who will function as reporters, producers and camerapersons, into the field, one to a presidential candidate, beginning this summer. In the past, networks have usually sent what they called “off-air reporters” to dog the candidates on the campaign trail, with full-fledged correspondents dropping in as the news dictated.

-- Elizabeth Jensen