As news cycles speed up, 'slow' journalists take months—even years—to report and tell in-depth stories.

“Everyone is going faster and faster and getting shallower and shallower,” says Salopek. “I said, ‘How about we slow down a bit to grab a little mindshare by going in the opposite direction.’ The rewards have been far in excess of my expectations, both professionally and personally. It’s a sense of narrative direction I never had before when I was flying around the world and telling stories of the crisis of the day that seemed disconnected.”

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Early in his career—“before,” he says, “I was really even a writer”—John Hersey decided to restrict his public expression to the medium in which he was most comfortable; that is, to the written rather than the spoken word. He has kept to his decision. This is only the second interview he has ever granted; the first was with Publishers Weekly in 1984.

Read this interview with John Hersey in the Paris Review where he speaks about the writing process he follows, the relationship he sees between fictional writing and journalism, and delves into his life as a writer and journalist. Interview.