One rule of journalism is to never become part of the story. That is often harder than it sounds, because if you are reporting from the scene of a story, your instinct is to be close enough to get all of the story. Sometimes people don't want to be part of a story, even if they are without a doubt, part of the story. This leads to the inevitable conflict of a reporter trying to ask questions of people who don't want to answer them.

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Most of my colleagues here at News Channel 8 know that I am something of a technology fan. OK, to be completely honest--I am a full-fledged "techno-geek", and have been since I was on the audio-visual squad in high school, many years ago. (Yes, it is a little pathetic to admit that in public.)

So with that background, hopefully you'll understand that I was easily lured by the unbelievable hype machine and yes its true--I was one of the first to buy one of Apple's new shiny iPhones Friday night.

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We like it when we can share good news with folks, and in this case it involves reporter Jamie Muro, his wife Rebecca (from Fox61), and a newcomer to their family named Charles Jameson.

Charles Muro is held by his proud father, News Channel 8 reporter Jamie Muro.

Charles was born at 9:15 P.M. Tuesday night. For those who like to know, he was a shade under eight and a half pounds and 21 inches long.

"Rebecca is doing great and daddy has actually changed a few diapers
already," Jamie told us in an e-mail today.

Congrats to all!!

It is a topic that everyone seems to be talking about, from the halls of power in Washington, DC to the streets of Fair Haven here in the Elm City. The topic of course is immigration.

Here at News Channel 8 we find that we are reporting multiple stories everyday about how both the United States as a nation--and Connecticut in all of its communities will deal with the complex questions that surround this issue.

Obviously, given an issue as emotional as this one is, there are many people on every side and there aren't just two sides on this issue. Everyone has an opinion and we are doing our best to capture a fair representation of those opinions in the stories we are producing for our newscasts.

And because there are so many questions, from whether or not the City of New Haven can or should issue ID cards--to how America might provide a "path to citizenship", this is a story that we will be covering for some time to come.

So this is one place to provide you with the opportunity to express your thoughts in the discussion about immigration. We ask that you participate by clicking the comments link below to share your thoughts and read those of the others who post here.

One basic rule of civility--We do ask everyone to refrain from attacking anyone for simply sharing their opinion with us. After all, this is a free country where everyone is entitled to their opinion--whatever it may be. We thank you in advance, for sharing yours with us.

This particular Friday in June--is Christmas come early for the celebrity journalism world. That is the serious sounding name given to what we usually refer to in our newsroom as "People In The News" items and what for years might have just passed as plain old gossip.

Believe me, we know that for a good portion of you in our audience, you couldn't care less about Paris Hilton's traversing of Southern California on her way to a date in courtroom. That seeing every second of that story playing out, or the countless other stories focused on the lifestyles of the usually rich and famous--is the journalism equivalent of junk food.

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We are working on some upgrades to our morning news "ticker", the service that puts news headlines, weather and lottery information across the bottom of your screen during our weekday morning editions of Good Morning Connecticut. In working on this, we have revisited the pros and cons of this feature in our morning newscasts that some people seem to like and others could live without.

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Our Kent Pierce did a story today about the fine line that all news organizations walk in deciding when or even if to report on stories of school dismissals and lockdowns [Read the story here]. It is relevant, given that in recent weeks we have had a number of those kind of incidents at various schools across Connecticut.

Kent asked me to comment on camera about WTNH's policy on when and how we decide to report on such incidents. I told him the answer is that we don't have a set policy, because we try to decide on each particular situation based on the specific set of circumstances involved at the time.

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It was a small thing, but it was nice to see ABC’s World News on this Friday night designate the people of the Virginia Tech community as their “Person(s) of the Week.” They have been through a week that has surely scarred all of them in ways that most of us will hopefully never know. This came on the day that people around this state and across the nation stopped for a moment to mourn for those lost, those wounded, and those just trying to cope and go on with their lives on the campus in Blacksburg, Virginia

The people of the Virginia Tech community have shown us all the true meaning of courage and dignity in the face of an incredible loss.

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