Item: Do you want to know more about the personal lives of journalists/Editor Steve Smith, News Is A Conversation

Sam The Reporter: The entire reason why I have a personal blog is so that people in the public know more about me and realize that I'm just a normal person like them. I feel like too often people read the newspaper and equate what they read with the "corporate, liberal media" (kind of an oxymoron) rather than someone who lives in their town whose goal is to inform them. I am a normal person. I like to have fun, I have a wonderful wife and great friends and we do lots of great things. I know that the things we do are, for the most part, some of the same things that many of the people who read my articles do. I want them to see that the person writing their news is like them - and that I care about providing them with as fair and accurate information as I can provide. It might sound cheesy, but I really mean it.

Mebbe you guys who comment and blurk here can answer that question better than Sam, BrodH20, other journalist bloggers and I can. You've read us -- in my case, for 3 1/2 years. You've seen us, for better or worse. Do you like that. Or do you like us spouting objectively (in news reports) and from ivory towers (columns and editorials). When you read our priceless prose in the news columns, does it help you fill in the corners of the picture by knowing us better from our blogs and interacting with us on the blogs?

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