From 1999 to 2008, he was a reporter with The Boston Globe. He worked for five years in the Washington bureau of The Globe, covering foreign policy, with a special focus on global health issues. From 2003 to mid-2006, he opened and ran the Globe’s first-ever Africa bureau. Based in South Africa, he traveled widely around the continent, focusing on a wide range of health issues, politics, counter-terrorism, development policy, and the future of oil in Africa.