LAST FRIDAY afternoon, 22 editors gathered in a corner conference room at the Globe for their daily news meeting. Marty Baron sat at the hub of an enormous U-shaped table, quietly asking questions and making an occasional joke. Deputy foreign editor Richard Chacón told the group that Charles Sennott had crossed over into territory controlled by the Iraqi government. " So Charlie’s invaded Iraq, " Chacón said, drawing a few laughs. To which Baron responded: " He’ll do anything for a dateline. "

After the story rundowns by Chacón and other editors, Paula Nelson, the paper’s deputy director of photography, flashed through a slide show of war photos, which were displayed on a movie screen hanging on the wall opposite Baron. The most striking — a Reuters image of a family fleeing Basra, with a disabled Iraqi tank looming in the background — led the paper the next day.

Despite the occasional levity, the editors back home know that their reporters and photographers in the field are at great risk. It was about a year ago that Anthony Shadid — then with the Globe, now the Washington Post’s man in Baghdad — was shot while reporting in the West Bank. Baron flew to Israel to be with his wounded reporter. In the current conflict, hostilities had barely gotten under way when one of the Globe’s embeds, Brian MacQuarrie, wrote a harrowing account of a firefight his Army unit had run into.

Every one of the Globe’s journalists, Baron says, underwent a training program run by either the military or a private consultant. Hanging in Jim Smith’s office is a $1500 bulletproof vest and $300 helmet of the sort that Globe staffers are carrying. Still, there are only so many safety measures that can be taken. " They’re all volunteers, " Baron says. " They have to make decisions on the fly. " (The Herald’s Andy Costello echoes that when speaking of Jules Crittenden and Kuni Takahashi: " They’re very good journalists, and they’re willing to take the risk to cover the story. " )

Yet there’s one decision Baron says he’s glad he didn’t have to make: whether to let David Filipov stay in Baghdad once the bombs started dropping. " That would have been a very, very hard call, " Baron says. " I’m somewhat relieved that we didn’t have to make the decision. "

Indeed, it can be easy to overlook such human considerations when you pick up the paper every day and read Filipov’s dispatches. What you may not know is that his father, Alexander Filipov, died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 — and that David Filipov began reporting from Afghanistan within weeks of that personal tragedy. Or that he and his wife, Anna Badkhen, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, are covering Northern Iraq together while a nanny takes care of their son back home, in Moscow. Or that even he doesn’t know whether he would have stayed in Baghdad if he hadn’t gotten kicked out.

" I felt as though it was a justifiable risk to try to stay for the bombing campaign, " Filipov says, " because the stories of what happens inside those campaigns need to be told.

" But you know, most sensible people, when they cover these things, unless they are of the really gonzo war hack ilk, come up with a plan that would keep them close to the action but not commit them to staying in harm’s way should they decide to — or need to — get out.

" In Baghdad, there was no way to plan like that. You knew you were either going to be in or out. "

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com