WASHINGTON—As he advances on a seven-year walk around the planet, journalist Paul Salopek is merging the oldest form of transportation with the newest digital technology, from Twitter to video chatting to blogging, to share the stories he's finding with the world.

Fed up with "parachuting in" to global hot spots as a reporter on quick-turn assignments, "I concocted an idea to link [stories] in the oldest genre there is, which is a quest story," Salopek told an audience at Washington, D.C.'s Newseum—the museum dedicated to the news industry—on Tuesday night. (Read Salopek's blog, Out of Eden Walk.)

The crowd was gathered for a discussion on "slow journalism," and Salopek's medium for joining the event spoke to the evening's theme