EDITOR'S COLUMN: WHEN BLOGGERS BREAK THE NEWS.

Byline: Annie Hundley valleynews.com editor

Recently, something very exciting happened on valleynews.com. A blogger scooped the newspaper.

Lisa Burks, who blogs about Grand View Memorial Park cemetery on the Glendale hub of valleynews.com, broke the story of incense igniting a grass fire at the cemetery. Burks lives near the cemetery and happened to be there when the fire broke out. She even snapped a few pictures. Burks' blog can be found at http://valleynews.com/alisaburks.

A few days later, a Daily News reporter found himself in the position of writing a follow-up story about the fire. It all evened out, because the reporter, Eugene Tong, was able to scoop Burks right back. He broke the news that the city banned incense burning at the cemetery as a result of the fire. Then, Burks blogged about Tong's story and the news he broke.

So, in summary: blogger scoops reporter, reporter writes about scoop, scoops blogger back, blogger writes about reporter's scoop. Phew!

While to some of you, this may sound like an overdone tete-a-tete, I prefer to view it as sign of the fascinating evolution of the public conversation that is newspapers.

Now a clip of Tong's cemetery fire story is displayed on the bulletin board by my desk, serving as a reminder that citizen journalists keep newspapers on their toes.