Publisher’s note: After 11 years, it’s time our readers got better acquainted with the people behind the names you see in our publications. We’ll start with reporter/photographer Larry Vogel.

I never imagined myself ending up as a journalist.

Ever since I can remember I’ve been fascinated with science, particularly the science of living things. As a child I’d come back from the public library with stacks of books running the gamut from natural history to astronomy, from weather to marine biology, from microbiology to paleontology. I knew all the plants growing around our home, and all the bugs in our yard. To this day, a dog-eared 1952 copy of the Golden Treasury of Natural History (containing my all-time favorite and much-read chapter on dinosaurs) retains an honored place on my bookshelf.

While still in elementary school I developed another consuming interest – photography. I even converted the corner of my parent’s basement into a darkroom when I was in sixth grade. I developed my own black and white film, and used my uncle’s cast-off enlarger to make and crop prints. I still have a box of those today.

I cruised to A’s in my high school science courses, and early on took it as a given that science would define and shape the rest of my life.After earning two undergrad degrees in biology and botany from Syracuse University and the State University of New York, I packed my belongings into a 12-foot U-Haul and came west to continue my studies at the University of Washington under Northwest botanical icon the late Arthur Kruckeberg.

It was there I discovered a new passion — teaching. My work as a grad student teaching assistant fired me up with the joy of transferring what I’d learned to others, so rather than continue toward a Ph.D. and the world of academia, I took my master’s degree and went on to teach science at what was then Bellevue Community College.

I absolutely loved teaching science. It gave me the chance to explain science as I understood it – not a collection of rules and facts, but a way to evaluate evidence, think and draw objective conclusions about how it all fits together. Hence – much to the chagrin of my students – my tests never relied on “multiple guess” questions, but rather on answers written out in sentences and paragraphs (a.k.a. the dreaded essay test), because I wanted to find out what they knew, not what they didn’t know. And I would forever admonish my students to dispassionately look at all the evidence, see where it leads, and never go in with a preconceived conclusion and choose just the pieces of evidence that support it.

With the 1970s came shrinking student bodies (remember the “baby bust”?), and with permanent teaching jobs increasingly scarce, I took a position with Seattle City Light to design a secondary schools outreach program focused on energy conservation, the environment, and new energy technologies like solar, wind and small hydro. I remained with City Light for 25 years, branching out along the way into City Council relations, managing the summer public tours at the Skagit Hydroelectric Project, web content management – and news media relations.

Little did I realize it, but when I retired from City Light in 2006 all the pieces were in place to set me off on a “third act” career in journalism.

Without a downtown job to take up my time and energies, I joined the Edmonds Historic Preservation Commission. One of the first things I did as a commissioner was organize a media event for a home being added to the Edmonds Register of Historic Places. There I was approached by a representative of the now-defunct Edmonds Patch, who asked me if I’d be interested in writing a weekly column on Edmonds History.

Why not, I thought, and for the next 18 months I essentially wrote a term paper each week on some aspect of Edmonds history. Needless to say, I learned a lot about the history of our community.

But even more significantly – and serendipitously – at the same event I met a journalist who had just started a local online news outlet focusing on Edmonds. This was of course Teresa Wippel, and the outlet was – and remains today – My Edmonds News.

When Patch closed its doors (it has since resumed in a different format), I contacted Teresa to ask if she had room for a writer/photographer. She took me on – tentatively at first – but apparently she liked my approach, the fact that I could both write and take photos, and the assignments kept coming – and coming.

And the rest, to coin a phrase, is history.

For me, being a reporter/photographer for My Edmonds News (and sister publications Lynnwood Today and MLTnews) is having the best job in town. My finger is constantly on the pulse of our community, I have built relationships with an incredible cross-section of business owners, city officials, local personalities, activists, artists, citizens and more, all of whom are threads in the quilt that makes this community the very special place it is.

And as a local news reporter I take great satisfaction in knowing I have a key role in this, and take seriously my key responsibility to do the best job I can for my readers.

Because I strongly believe that an informed citizenry is vital to an effective, high-functioning community, I am dedicated to providing my readers with objective, clear, unbiased, understandable information to help inform their thoughts and decisions.

Do I have my own views? Of course I do. But it would be a major disservice to my readers to allow these to slip into my reporting. My job is to provide accurate unvarnished information, and to let my readers draw their own conclusions. Stated differently, I’m not an influencer who seeks to sway your opinion – I’m an information source who gives you what you need to reach your own informed opinions.

Last year I was approached by a reader at a public meeting, who took me aside to comment on an article I’d recently written.

“I read it over several times,” he said.  “It was a great article, but I can’t figure out what side of the issue you’re on.”

What higher praise could I ask for?

Larry Vogel has lived in Edmonds since 1990. He currently resides in the Maplewood neighborhood with his wife Janice Carr. Find him on Twitter @EdmondsLarryV