What I love most about New York Times foreign correspondent Barry Bearak’s first-person account of his time in a Zimbabwe jail for the crime of “committing journalism” is the sub-plot that involves the Internet.

You can blame Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe’s broken justice system for the insanity that led to Bearak’s jailing, and you probably should, but Bearak also clearly wants you (and his bosses) to know that the Internet age was partly to blame, too.

Here is how Bearak reported on Zimbabwe before the election crisis, back before he was arrested:

With elections coming in Zimbabwe, I soon made two trips to Harare, each time taking ritualistic precautions for safety. I left my credentials and laptop at home, entered the country as a tourist and interviewed people only behind closed doors. Each night, I destroyed my notes after e-mailing their contents to myself at an Internet cafe. I wrote my articles only upon returning to Johannesburg.

Sounds very spy-vs-spy, but safe. Then, surprisingly, Mugabe lost the election, Zimbabwe became huge news, and…

Daily articles needed to be filed. I had to openly work the streets, then go back to a room with a reliable wireless link to transmit from my laptop. Over time, normally wary reporters began taking risks that mocked earlier prudence, announcing their names and affiliations at opposition news conferences.

Necessity numbed my own caution. My articles required continuous updating for The Times’s Web site, so there I’d be in downtown Harare, a backpack slung over my shoulder, dictating quotes from my notebook and spelling names into the wavering connection of the mobile phone.

In case you’re not getting the implication that the demands of reporting for the web led to his jailing, Bearak mentions it a few more times:

I was staying at York Lodge, a collection of eight cottages spread around a lovely expanse of shrubs and lawn. At age 58, after 33 years as a reporter, I’d like to think I have a nose for trouble, alert to danger like some frontier cavalry scout who tenses up at the sound of a suspicious birdcall.

But the police had been at the lodge for 45 minutes before I knew a thing. I was filing another update for the Web site when I left the room for a breather about 4 p.m. Maria Phiri, a tall, wiry detective in hoop earrings and a red dress, called out, “Hey you!”

And then:

I managed to call Celia with a borrowed phone. My wife somehow knows how to all at once be emotionally distraught and serenely levelheaded. She was already strategizing about how to free me; at the same time she was getting ready to assume the newspaper’s Zimbabwe coverage from Johannesburg.

“Don’t worry, whatever the cells are like I can handle it,” I told her, attempting a tough guy’s bravado. I added a reporter’s inside joke. “Really, anything is better than having to file four stories a day for the Web site.”

It’s old news that it’s a new world out there for journalists, but it’s interesting to see that domestic reporters aren’t the only ones both embracing and harrumphing at all the change. Interesting, too, to see that during Bearak’s ordeal in Zimbabwe the new media world cut both ways—sometimes favoring him:

The night before, I had wanly told [my lawyer] that the case against me seemed hopelessly open-and-shut. I had written articles, and anyone who Googled my name with “Zimbabwe” would have all the proof that was needed. She harrumphed at that, insisting that even a simple database search was beyond the technical expertise of the Harare police.

I now realized she might be right.