The annual lecture is part of the Johnston project, which brings professional writers to campus for presentations, workshops and discussions with faculty, students and the community. The project is named for Richard W. Johnston, an acclaimed journalist who reported from the Pacific during World War II and went on to work at Time, Life and then Sports Illustrated, where he eventually became executive editor.

Humes, the author of six book-length works of immersion journalism, gave a lecture entitled "The Art of Being There: Immersing Yourself in the Story." He said he had puzzled over the difference between "immersion journalism" and every other kind of journalism. "I never knew I was an immersion journalist until someone said so in a review of one of my books," he said.

"It seems to me the actual process of immersion journalism is not so different from any other kind of reporting," he said. "The best newspaper reporters are immersed in their subjects whether they know it or not."

According to Humes, the real difference is that traditional journalism is about what's public, while immersion journalism is about what's private. For example, his experience of sitting in a courtroom day after day allowed him to witness "all these daily displays of vanity and grandiosity that never make it into the mainstream news," he said.

Journalists' invasion of this private world requires them to face a whole new set of ethical issues, he said. He wondered out loud what his ethical obligation was to a mother who watched her infant die—a situation he found himself in while researching his book, Baby E.R. After the book came out, he saw the parents of an infant who'd died in the E.R. The mother said she had read Baby E.R. again and again. "I dreaded what she was going to tell me—that I'd compounded her grief," Humes said. "But she hugged me. She said they'd come to view it as a memorial."

According to Humes, being granted this kind of access to the most private moments of people's lives is what makes immersion journalism so gratifying. "Many times you find as you make this awful intrusion that you're not so unwelcome after all," he said.

In addition to authoring books, Humes is a writer-at-large for Los Angeles Magazine and has contributed to the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Glamour and California Lawyer, among other publications.