In 1997, he went to work for the "Los Angeles Times". While at that paper, he covered local, national and international news, opening the newspaper's first bureau in Bogota, Colombia. Miller was briefly held prisoner by the leftist Colombian guerrilla group known as the FARC, or Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, an episode later documented in a short animated news feature. Two of his reporters were later held captive by a second Colombian leftist group, the ELN, or Ejército de Liberación Nacional.