Reporters on the Job

• Ethiopia's Mr. Rogers: Kaleyesus Bekele, a reporter for the English-language paper The Reporter, was thrilled when staff writer Scott Baldauf told him that they were going to interview Ababa Tesfaye, Kaleyesus's childhood hero. Kaleyesus was acting as Scott's interpreter.

"I've had the chance to meet Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, the head of the EU, and so many other leaders," Kaleyesus told Scott. "But to me, this interview is much more important than any of those."

During the interview, Ababa Tesfaye's facial expressions were so intense that, Scott says, he almost didn't need an interpreter. "Kaleyesus told me that Ababa Tesfaye's storytelling is so good that even Ethiopian children who live abroad and never learn their national language love to watch his show on videotape. 'You can tell there's some kind of magic about him,' he told me."

• A Ball Too Small: When staff writer Sara Miller Llana and photo editor Alfredo Sosa went to report today's story on free trade in Ecuador, they were told that the road that leads to the rose company they were seeking runs right down the equator. All Sara and Alfredo had to do was to look for the "ball" – a globe – that marks the spot to turn right. "We drove past it a hundred times," says Sara. "We had been to the country's main equator monument and that globe is huge. So we didn't expect a modest globe." In the end, they found the company by "asking a million people." Then they went back to find the monument, and decided they liked it better than its gargantuan sibling.

Amelia Newcomb
Deputy world editor