BDN staffers to join MMA training cruise

EDITOR’S NOTE: In late May and early June, Bangor Daily News reporter Eric Russell and photojournalist John Clarke Russ will fly to Odessa, Ukraine, to meet the State of Maine training ship. They will spend several days aboard the vessel as it travels from Odessa to Split, Croatia. While aboard the ship and in each port, Russell and Russ will dispatch stories and photographs daily charting the ship’s progress overseas. The hope is to capture a small part of the day-to-day operations of the cruise, how its training prepares students for the real world and how camaraderie among the cadets builds during the 60-day trip.

Russell, a 2003 graduate of the University of Maine, has been with the BDN for 3 1/2 years. He started as an intern, then moved to the city desk as a general assignment reporter and finally to his current position, covering Hancock County from the paper’s bureau office in Ellsworth. Russell, 28, lives in Dedham.

Russ, 41, is no stranger to salt water. A native of Virginia Beach, Va., he relinquished his surfboard to double-major in economics and German at Hampden-Sydney College with his junior year abroad at Oxford University. He has a master’s degree in photojournalism from Syracuse University. He worked four years as a freelancer in Connecticut before becoming Director of Photography at the Record-Journal in Meriden, Conn., a position he held for three years. He has been with the Bangor Daily News photo staff since 2003 and lives in Bangor.