I tend to gravitate toward the "act two," or "act three," or "act four" stories - either things that are underreported, where we think we already know the common narrative, or things that are at the margins of an over-reported story, where we're all so focused in one direction that we're missing something crucial that's unfolding off to the side.

For me, the part of reporting that's the most rewarding and energizing is just hearing directly from people whose voices haven't often been heard, or incorporated into mainstream media. That stuff is really, really gratifying, and so to realize that you could make a career of that part of it, that appealed to me.

Workers are actually being starved on the largest military base in Baghdad, and women are being raped with impunity - and because it doesn't fit into a Hollywood context it's not going to fly.

I learned a lot, investigative methodology - wise, from litigators - watching their process.

The journalist's job isn't to be someone's friend, or their psychologist, or anything other than what we actually are. And at the end of the day, that can definitely seem like such a strange, extractive relationship.

People are sometimes losing their homes before being convicted of a crime, or their cash or their cars.

I wanted to think about ways to get an American readership concerned with what is happening in Mexico, but also to reframe it as a problem Americans share.