“He’s old school,” as his brother in Boston described him.

Photography by: Tomas Munita/New York Times

And that is an understatement. David is one of the most talented and humble reporters I have ever met. He is quiet and unassuming and nothing short of heroic. He has taken extraordinary risks as a reporter from his Pulitzer-Prize-winning dispatches from the war in Bosnia, where he was also detained, to his reporting in Afghanistan, where he also won a Pulitzer Prize for excellent work. He was picked up on November 10 by captors while inerviewing a Taliban commander and he was held for the last seven months, just two months after he had been married. He escaped last week and the story of his release was broken on Sunday in the New York Times and a detailed account of the escape appears in today’s editions. David is fearless, but never reckless. He is not a cowboy, just one hell of a great reporter. He’s old school indeed.

I’ve known David from the field for the better part of a decade and I have been worried sick about him for every day of the last seven months. Those of us who knew about his capture were sworn to silence at the request of his family.

One of his signatures as a reporter was a faded, old Boston Red Sox cap and, when we crossed paths, he and I often shared news from Fenway and our shared hometown. I was traveling in Pakistan and Afghanistan for most of this month and thinking of David at every turn. The story of his capture in Logar Province, just outside of Kabul, was very much on my mind when I took the decision not to go there in pursuit of a story. I know he would have approved of the caution. And when I was meeting with former officials in the now deposed Taliban government, I took each step carefully and tried to think the way David would think about the reporting. He holds important lessons for all of us who do this kind of work in the field, lessons about the need to be careful, of course, but also the need to have courage. There are some other colleagues who I work with and admire who are still being held and whose details have to remain secret for now. All I can say is we are being constantly vigilant about their situation and working quietly toward their release. They share David’s courage and sense of importance for geting the story in the field.

The kind of reporting David has done his whole life is the best of foreign reporting. And when you are dropping a row of quarters for a newspaper as great as the New York Times remember the quality and the courage of some of the people behind those bylines.

I was at Fenway yesterday watching the Red Sox win a great game with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. I was there with my boys in field boxes near the Pesky pole in a swirling mist of rain and thinking of David’s father and about fate. I was hoping David was watching the game with his family. What a great father’s day present for David’s Dad to have his son safely returned. Welcome home, David.

Tom, who is our Managing Editor for Correspondents, has been leading our outstanding coverage of the global economy and today he offered his insights on a special segment of the program titled “Talk of the World.” Tom shared his knowledge as an economist and on-the-ground reporter about how the crisis is affecting every corner of the globe. He also shared the GroundTruth that he is hearing every day from our correspondents in the field and that we are posting every day at GlobalPost.

In the world of business reporting, there seems to be an endless barrage of charts and graphs and metrics and headlines and experts on Wall Street. But there is very little reporting from the field and that is where we feel we have set ourselves apart.

Our coverage of the global economic crisis has gotten a lot of attention, particularly our special project “A World of Trouble” in which we offer an interactive map that takes you to 20 different countries where 20 of our correspondents offer insight and analysis of how the downturn is affecting the country in which they live and report every day.

It is GroundTruth on the global economy.

And while I am boasting about our coverage, I want to add one more shout out to Tom Mucha and our multimedia storyteller extraordinaire, Mark Scheffler, who were recognized by SABEW, the Society for American Business Editors and Writers, for their year-long series on entrepreneurs which they did last year for Crain’s Chicago Business.

It’s been quite a week so far, starting off with a strong story about GlobalPost in the New York Times business section and a great mention on the DailyCandy.com, a very hip, insider’s guide to what’s hot delivered by email to all those who know what’s cool in fashion, food and fun. And, clearly, they are cool enough to care about the world and applaud our coverage, particularly the fact that we have some tremendously talented women who cover some seriously dangerous and interesting places.

So GlobalPost is getting hot and the traffic to the site is starting to suggest that. We hope you keep coming and reading and letting us know what you think about our coverage of the world.