From editorial director of news Kate Shellnutt: In-person reporting is always going to generate more details and a better sense of a story than a string of phone interviews. Part of what makes Maria Baer’s article about recovery ministries in Portland so powerful are the scene-setting descriptions from what she observed on the streets and in the shelters there.
 
Being in Portland also meant the story affected Maria differently. On a podcast discussion with her husband, who’s head of the Center for Christian Virtue in Ohio, she talked about how unsettling it felt to see bodies on the sidewalk and wonder whether they were okay.
 
Maria asked her sources at Christian recovery ministries—all of them armed with Narcan if they needed to intervene—how they knew who could use urgent help or who might be dead. They described how you could look for a gray color in someone’s fingers or face. Or if there’s a crowd surrounding a body, usually something’s wrong. “It’s really strange and upsetting,” she said.
 
Maria’s husband admitted that while she was reporting in Portland, he realized the kinds of areas she’d be in and advised her to not walk around by herself. “So I rented a bike!” she said. “I held to the letter of the law.”