I agree with cnredd, ask a journalist to cover a hospital opening or 3 marines getting killed in a roadside blast is liking asking a lion if he wants salad or steak for dinner, but the question you have to ask is this; is a school opening 8,000 miles away news? I don't think so, yet the death of 3 citizens and indeed soldiers of your own country is relevant to the public, i.e. they care about it.
The simple fact is, the insurgency in Iraq is as violent as it has ever been, there are bombings almost daily and to ignore these matters would be a dereliction of duty. And a lot of the problems in Iraq are traceable to decisions made by the Bush Administration. There were numerous alternatives to the handling of the post-war situation, but instead a blind adherence to ideology was the way the neo-cons in the pentagon chose to formulate the strategy to win the peace. This policy has failed miserably and is still being applied to this very day.
Convictions are good in a leader, but so is knowing when a plan has failed, and formulating new strategies is just as important. Bush claims his on the ground commanders are happy with the situation, yet they themselves are clamouring for more troops. And then their is the new Iraqi army, 150,000 strong and growing. Yet these troops are simply footsoldiers, there is no command structure, they have no recruitment capabilities or planning capabilities, sub-standard equipment, barracks, and other vital infrastructure, yet the administration sticks to the numbers as if this was all that mattered. Well coalition forces took Iraq with less than 150,000 troops, would the Iraqi army be capable of such a feat, yet we are to believe they can secure Iraq, something the greatest military in the world, with near unlimited resouces has been unable to do without a lot more boots on the ground, and then you argue that the reason for this is the New York Times!!! (no-one did yet, but I'm just saying...)