In case you missed it, yesterday Steven Ward chatted with C.J. Chivers, New York Times Moscow Bureau correspondent:

What advice would you give to daily newspaper reporters who want to work for a newspaper with the size and influence of a New York Times?

I'm not much on advice, but I'll say this. There is no secret to it. What we do is rooted in fundamentals. Take my job covering Russia. It's not a lot different from covering a town, a city hall, a state legislature or a murder. By that I mean that, yes, okay, the lifestyle is different, and the languages are not English, and the cultures are different, but no matter these external differences, the bones of the job are the same. Every day, whether the subject you are after is familiar or unfamiliar, you go around or call around or email around and ask people to tell you what they know, what they saw, what they heard, what they think. You ask them why any of it is important or interesting. You ask them to tell you how they know what they're telling you. And you ask them to tell you what they don't know, what they didn't see, what they didn't hear, so you can establish the limits of their knowledge. You ask them if there is anyone else you should be talking to and how to be in touch with them. You ask them if there is corroborating material to what they say. Documents? Video? Tape? Transcript? Other witnesses or participants or victims or victors? You ask them what's the best resource out there for understanding the thing you think you're writing about. (It might be an old lawsuit, or a union contract, a book of regulations, a copy of a budget or a medical record; it might be a poem or a local historian or archivist. It could be a family photo album. It could be anything. It could be many things. But there is usually something.)

More here.