On the beaten path

Here are a couple lines from the first two stories:

The team reached the tiny village by four-wheel-drive truck, dodging horses, dogs and cattle on a dirt road that often nudged cliff edges with dizzying drops. The vehicle bounced along two-foot-deep ruts and over craters washed out by tropical rains.

“Nombre?” Dr. Richard Patnode asked a little girl in a dirty red tank top and skirt.

“Senana,” came the soft reply.

Behind the pavilion, a chicken pecked through a mound of garbage; at one side sits a rude shelter draped in plastic that Knutson said a family calls home. A rusty barrel nearby held rainwater collected for washing and, maybe, she speculated, drinking.

Suzanne — we all call her by her childhood nickname, Shan — isn’t in Nicaragua. She did the interviews from her desk here in the newsroom, by cell phone from Nicaragua to Plattsburgh.

She is able to give such good detail and description because she does such a great job getting just the right information from people. It’s really a tribute to her reporting ability.

She says she couldn’t do it without the excellent input of those she interviews, who are terrific about giving specifics about what’s happening around them.

The Mission of Hope volunteers call her almost every day, and she interviews a number of them as they pass the cell phone around.

A frequent mission member, Bonnie Black, whose husband, Roger, is the Press-Republican webmaster, sends us photos by e-mail. This year, for the first time, her daily journal entries are being used as a blog on our Web site.

On the first official Mission of Hope trip, we sent reporter Saul Ferrer, who spoke Spanish, and he dictated stories from one phone at the compound at Chiquilistagua.

It was great to actually have a reporter there, but it was too expensive to do every year, not to mention that we lost a reporter for a whole week.

Shan, who had reported the very first and much-more conservative trip that prompted creation of Mission of Hope, took over again the next year. Using phone cards, she called the number in Chiquilistagua at the same time every evening, as volunteers lined up to share their stories of the day with her.

The connection to that land-line phone wasn’t (and still isn’t) the best. Sometimes it took several tries to get through, and there was an echo that made interviewing a challenge.

Now — even though we can’t talk to reporters on some sections of the Adirondack Northway by cell phone — Shan connects that way every day for her stories.

She collects her details, quotes and information as it all actually unfolds and then crafts them into a beauty of a story ... all within a couple of hours.