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.

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 found it really astonishing that undocumented migrants were kidnapped so routinely, that it was such a commonplace part of the journey for people trying to reach the US, and that we hear almost nothing about it here.

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.

The tremendous challenge of narrative journalism about subjects that are underreported is, how do you make people care about something they think they already know about, or think they don't need to know about?

One thing I've discovered is that if you remain in contact with people, if you build longitudinal relationships, if you invest in sources who seem at first like they're uncomfortable or unwilling to talk, if you keep in touch with them, a year later that might yield something much more powerful.

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