I believe there are a growing number of people in the news industry who don't see bloggers as people to be "beat." For my part, I believe that newspapers should be doing as much as it can to become a part of the local conversation and cultivate a local blog scene -- and that means talking with local bloggers, supporting local blog events and showing bloggers link love when they write great posts.

The point I was trying to make in my post is that we need to start listening to people like you who have a tremendous understanding of online culture and technology. The purpose wasn't to highlight competition between your site and WickedLocal. Rather, I wanted to highlight the fact that reporters and editors need to take more cues from sites like yours if they want to stay relevant to the conversation online. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all... :)

Keep on truckin' Lisa.