Start the Presses:

The hottest days I can remember seemed to always happen in August. In the San Diego neighborhood where I grew up, late summer afternoons seemed to always digress into water fights. They would start with squirt guns, move on to water balloons and, invariably, end with the biggest weapon of all: the garden hose. Also invariably, the kid that started the war would complain, once cornered, that “My mom says I can’t get wet.”

You can imagine how often this type of protest worked. There’s a clear parallel in adult life: If you stand for a principle or idea, you cannot shy away from it when you’re facing down the business end. We at the La Cañada Valley Sun cannot hold up the banner free speech without being prepared to deal with frank and uncut criticism.

But this increasingly connected world has also given us the ability to better and more fully explain ourselves. Blogs are among the most effective tools we have for this purpose. If you have a deeper understanding of how the news gathering process works, I believe you’ll read and trust our words all the more.

Here’s a quick rundown on each:

• TCN North Now: Breaking news and updates in Glendale, Burbank and La Cañada

• Tasty Edits: Newsroom insights from editors

• It Shines for All: Analysis and scuttlebutt about local news, sports and politics

Let me give you an example of how blogs can improve transparency. I wrote about the dilemma below on the Tasty Edits blog.

On July 21, the Valley Sun’s sister paper, the Glendale News-Press, received word that an elderly couple had died following a car crash. Our reporter, Mary O’Keefe, wrote a brief story describing the tragedy, but did not include any names. We placed it online immediately.

That afternoon, I received an e-mail from a member of the Crescenta Valley Town Council identifying the victims. The California Highway Patrol, at this point, had declined to identify the couple.

We updated the story online, and included the names of the victims. The Town Council is the de facto city government in the Crescenta Valley. If one of their members disseminated that information, we reasoned, it was public.