Email: Susan.danseyar@patch.com

Phone: 617-285-5152

Hometown: West Hartford, CT

Birthday: October 25

I never expected to be a journalist. Rather, I started my career as a ballerina. After too many injuries, however, I went back to school to study something practical – literature. Armed with my new degree, I was an English teacher at Southington High School in Connecticut for a year and then tried to balance a life of modern dancing and freelance writing.

Finding myself in my hometown one fall with no job or prospects, I wandered into the local newsroom and asked the editor-in-chief if I could be an arts reviewer. Instead, he handed me a pad and sent me to a Town Council meeting that night. It took over three hours to write my first news article but I was immediately hooked on community journalism and have worked in the field ever since. 

Beliefs

At Patch, we promise always to report the facts as objectively as possible and otherwise adhere to the principles of good journalism. However, we also acknowledge that true impartiality is impossible because human beings have beliefs. So in the spirit of simple honesty, our policy is to encourage our editors to reveal their beliefs to the extent they feel comfortable. This disclosure is not a license for us to inject our beliefs into stories or to dictate coverage according to them. In fact, the intent is the opposite: we hope that the knowledge that our beliefs are on the record will cause us to be ever mindful to write, report and edit in a fair, balanced way. And if you ever see evidence that we failed in this mission, please let us know.

Politics 

I'm a registered Democrat and have been for years. For a long time, though, I only voted in presidential elections because I was so engrossed in the local ones of the communities I was covering that I didn’t take the time to read about the candidates for School Committee and City Council in Cambridge where I live. Now, I realize the truth of “All politics is local” and pay close attention to how my own neighborhood is represented. 

Religion

I don’t follow a formal religion  -- just the Golden Rule. If we don’t treat others the way we would like to be treated, how can we ever hope to make the world a better place?

Local Hot-Button Issues

Obviously, people in the North End are concerned with trash, noise and – like elsewhere in the city – the lack of parking. There’s an additional challenge here of maintaining the traditions the Italian immigrants brought to their new home some 80 years ago while embracing change that is good for the residents and businesses.