In the rough streets of Baghdad, the Paper of Record spends $3 million a year to maintain a compound complete with blast walls, a reporting staff of about 80 Iraqis and full-time armed guards, nicknamed the “New York Times Militia.”

From a staff fatality to following the trail of two kidnapped correspondents, the foreign editor of The New York Times, Susan Chira, offered a striking glimpse into the sophisticated news gathering operation that is the Baghdad bureau, in a Thursday night speech to a well-attended Tresidder Oak Room.

Reporting on the deepening sectarian violence in Iraq is perhaps more challenging than the Herculean task of establishing lasting stability in the war-torn country. The New York Times must cope with this sobering reality and deal with extreme challenges — both physical and political. The stakes are high, she said, and the risk is real.

“All of it is really unprecedented in our experience,” said Chira, while describing the ever-declining freedom of reporters to travel in Iraq.

Where protecting personal safety and breaking the big story can be mutually exclusive, she said tough judgment calls must be made.

Chira said she gets calls at 3 a.m. from her reporters in combat zones wanting to know whether they should risk traveling down a volatile road or venturing into a hostile neighborhood.

“Insurgents actually read The Times,” she said. “We know they Google it. And we know they know bylines.”

The immersion into the lives of subjects covered in The Times’ stories has become harder than ever in Iraq, Chira said, because it’s often not safe to venture out into the streets or visit people in their homes.

“It’s a much more prolonged process, and it requires a lot of patience and filtering,” she said. She offered reporter Sabrina Tavernise as an example, who spent months trying to get all the pieces for a story about the systematic assassination of Shia bakers.

One of the ways The Times gathers information is through locals who can file dispatches from turbulent areas not safe for Westerners. But this practice has drawn concerns about bias, accuracy and verifiability of information learned from inexperienced Iraqis.

“Over the years, we have been able to winnow the people who are untrustworthy and have agendas,” she said. “Wherever possible, we don’t rely solely on the Iraqi staff.”

But even in the relatively harmonious newsroom of the Baghdad bureau, there is occasional conflict between Sunni, Shiite and Kurd staff members, she said — a microcosm of the intractable clash of cultures within the Iraq theater.

“There are tensions that arise when people are coming from a different place,” she said, mentioning that tempers flared during the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Another information-gathering mechanism that The Times uses is embedding reporters with military forces. Some media observers criticize this tactic, worrying that American officials can control what reporters see and provide a misleading view of what’s happening by reiterating the party line.

“Sometimes you sit there for 10 days and you can’t get a helicopter out and you’re stuck and you’re screwed,” she said.

But embedded reporters often get good information from candid soldiers at all ranks, Chira said.

“We’ve found great insights from living with units for a period of time,” she said.

Other times, governments may flat-out lie.

“What is truth?” Chira asked. “There’s a really elastic definition, and we don’t find that Iraqi officials are always candid with us.”

Without full access, it’s hard to be sure about some important details. She cited the lack of accurate civilian casualty numbers as a symptom of the larger informational deficiency.

The Paper of Record also comes under fire in a more figurative sense — the consequence of a politically charged climate and the high stakes of the war.

“There’s enormous pressure from the perspective of supporters of the war,” she said. “And there is perhaps greater pressure from critics of the war who want The New York Times to declare it a failure.”

Chira, who has been foreign editor since Jan. 2004, defended The Times’ credibility, which came under fire for its pre-Iraq war coverage.

“The New York Times frames a lot of perspectives, and we have a responsibility to get it as right as we can,” she said. “You are always held to a higher standard.”

She said the paper has not been perfect.

Only a few of the paper’s Middle East correspondents speak Arabic, Chira acknowledged.

“Everyone else relies on translators,” she said. “We’re working really hard to cultivate Arabic speakers and bring them through the ranks.”

But it will always take more than fluency in Arabic to win a coveted foreign post from most widely respected newspaper in the world.

“You have to have a gut, and a gut can save your life,” she said. “I’m not sending kids over there. It’s not going to happen.”