Times/News

There's not too many businesses still around here from my Burien boyhood.

I'm working for one of the few that predates me.

The Highline Times is celebrating its 60th anniversary tonight (Wednesday) with a big party and fundraiser for the Hi-Liners at the Burien Elks.

My parents avidly read the Highline Times and as a budding newspaperaholic I scanned it, too.

The Times traces its beginnings to the Highline-Glendale Gazette, started in 1945. A year later it consolidated with the Burien Times and became the Highline Times.

In the mid-1970s, Jerry Robinson bought the Highline Times. Then, in 1989, after nearly 40 years in the community newspaper and printing business, Jerry retired and sold the paper.

The Seattle Times eventually bought the Highline Times but abruptly pulled the plug on providing local news and advertising to our community in 1998.

Jerry Robinson came to the rescue. Two years later, then-editor Maggie Larrick took a chance on me and now I'm the editor of my hometown paper.

I find myself surrounded by colleagues with surprisingly strong backgrounds and talents you don't expect to find at a small weekly newspaper.

Our bulldog, co-editor Ralph Nichols has covered politics and state government for daily papers in Alaska and Idaho.

Ad Manager Janet Grella served as advertising director for the giant Marshall Field's department store in Chicago (with a budget of $45 million, she proudly tells me) as well as ad and promotion manager for the NBC-owned television station in Chicago.

I discovered ad rep Sheila Lengle's persuasive powers when I witnessed her convince a local city council to bypass the usual staff work, committee consideration and study session discussions to approve buying a color advertisement in our special section.

Looking at Amber "Cat" Trillo's photographs, I believe her when she tells me she "taught a thing or two about photographs" to another respected newspaper photographer.

Tim Clinton is not your stereotypical loud-mouth jock sports editor but he's been covering Highline sports with a quiet competence for years.

I greatly respect graphic artist Victoria Persons for her graphic design expertise and common sense.

Our newest staffer, editorial assistant Sara Loken, brings a calmness to the office we often need.

Let's not forget our columnists and free-lancers who allow us to put out a quality product with a very small staff.

Then there's publisher Jerry Robinson, whose enthusiasm and curiosity is hard to match, even for staffers three decades or more younger.

His sons, Ken, Tim and Patrick, are planning for the paper's future. (Check out our new Web site: www.highlinetimes.com)

We also find ourselves with the important responsibility of covering a community of over 100,000 residents spread over five cities and an unincorporated area. At my first journalism job, we served 50,000 residents with a daily paper.

The Highline Times is pretty much it for regular news coverage of our community.

The Seattle P-I has decided to focus on the "Seattle narrative." The Seattle Times staffs large north and eastside bureaus but no south bureau. The King County Journal covers the Eastside and the Valley. The News-Tribune serves Tacoma.

I don't want to get all "It's A Wonderful Life" on you, but without the Highline Times the community would have been less informed about ex-Des Moines Mayor Don Wasson and his secret conveyor promoters, two former Southwest Suburban Sewer District commissioners, the third runway debate from the neighboring residents' perspective, closures of Highline schools and the differing sides of the Burien Town Square discussion.

Residents would have been left getting their news from quarterly public-relations city newsletters and government access television. (Our slogan: "We sit through the meetings, so you don't have to.")

So we'll party a little tonight and in the morning with the continued support of our advertisers and readers, we'll keep on doing what the Highline Times has been doing for six decades.