For most good reporters, writing is slow death. True's curiosity not only took him to live in a foreign land, but to explore reaches of that land most natives ignored. Curiosity may have killed True, but it also gave his life intensity and joy. The other trait that sustains a veteran reporter is anger. If the world were the way it should be, there'd be no story.
Anger provides the edge.
Journalistic training just polishes that edge, provides techniques of fairness and analysis that raise writing from a primitive cry of the heart to reportage that can be relied on even by those who don't share the anger. Reporters who have skills but no underlying base of anger become cynical newsroom drones or, more often, leave for better paying public relations jobs. Philip True had that anger. It showed in his work as a reporter. He would much rather spend days hiking mountain paths to find forgotten indigenous peoples than to hobnob with the power elites in Mexico City.