Today I speak with Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Evan Osnos about covering events slightly more important than the fight between Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson. At the time of our correspondence, he was located in Tehran, covering the Iranian elections.

Did you receive much cultural-adjustment training before you went to Iraq?
Not formally. For better or worse, trial and error seems to be part of the job. Like most reporters, I read what I could find before I arrived, but I discovered that Iraq was a far more opaque and troubled place than most of us-or the literature -seemed to grasp. I concluded there's no real substitute for getting on the ground and groping your way through it.

How do you cover the experiences of soldiers without getting in their way?
I've always found that troops are more welcoming than one might expect. They are proud of what they know, and they want to showcase it. Many of the reporters I admire most simply fade into the background and do more listening than direct questioning. Asking for philosophical reflection from soldiers on patrol usually falls flat anyway. If things get dicey, reporters often try to find a senior enlisted man who they trust, and then they stick close to him. He will point out where is safe and where is unsafe. And he is often a good salty character to boot.

How do you find you are treated as a reporter when you are abroad as opposed to when you're covering the news back in the states? Are people more suspicious of you? Hostile?
The Middle East, of course, has a strong current of anti-Americanism these days; Arabs, by and large, resent American policy. But in one-on-one interactions, that rarely translates into personal hostility. In shantytowns in Gaza or Lebanon, for instance, refugees will routinely insist that you stay for dinner. And in Iraq, people will serve you tea while denouncing the U.S.

People are suspicious and conspiracy theories are rampant in the Arab world, largely because readers have learned not to trust state-run media. But that also means they are often eager to talk and hear something different. One caveat is that, particularly after bombings, one angry man's hostility can agitate a crowd, so I try not to linger in a place where mob mentality seems to be taking over.

Did you receive training when it came to reporting during the chaos of war or is it something you just have to learn when you're there?
Like a lot of news organizations, the Tribune sent me to a weeklong "hostile environments" course run by one of the big media-security firms. It had useful information about first aid, the blast radius of explosives, and strategies for getting through hostage situations. Some of it has come in handy, and, mercifully, some of it has not. Of course, there's no substitute for learning on the ground. I always found it pays most to find someone experienced and simply copy them. There are tricks-like how to blast-proof your bedroom windows with plastic, or how to behave around jumpy teenage gunmen --that I couldn't discover in books. I've learned more from listening to seasoned reporters than from anything else.

Do you think you'd like be a foreign correspondent for a long time to come or would you cover any other beats or write in any other styles?
Being a correspondent abroad is hard to beat. It's a rare combination of independence and support. It's thrilling and exhausting. I think the best correspondents often hit their stride only after doing it long enough to recognize where events are going, to see what's happening around the next corner. We'll see if I get there.