A new editor talking over a community's newspaper is sort of like a strange family moving into that long-vacant house next door. Will he clean up the overgrown weeds, paint the house and make the place respectable in the neighborhood? Or, will he a slovenly leaver of messes and often somewhere else doing something else?

One new rumor is that since I live in Alki and also edit the West Seattle Herald, this was sort of an add-on to be engaged lightly and while I am too busy putting out fires in that peninsula across Elliott Bay. Well, if that is what you expect, you will be disappointed.

I asked for this job as editor of the Ballard News-Tribune because I know I can guide it to the community prominence that Ballard expects. The owners of this paper, the Robinsons, know that I will not fool around and will work hard to make the News-Tribune a real newspaper that readers seek out each week because they need to know what we are writing about.

I will be as much a part of this community as you want me to be, and often we will be pushing into areas never before entered by a community newspaper. We will work to expand what is known in the news business as enterprise news, where we take a sent of circumstances that face the wider Seattle community and find out exactly how they will affect the approximately 100,000 residents of what I will call "Greater Ballard."

You want to be a part of this, then tell me what you expect us to do. We want to hear all the gripes, complaints, grudges and assorted negatives. We also want to hear where we have done things right and how we should do more of them.

No, we won't be able to do everything. The staff is small because, quite honestly, the revenue from advertising sales is small and the paid circulation is also small. We need to be bloody good or that won't change and we will work heaven and earth to be so good you won't be able to spend a week without the News-Tribune on the kitchen table, on the desk or on the chair on top of Brand X from downtown.

Here are some things you can expect very soon. This page, Page Six, will become a real editorial and op-editorial page. We will present editorials supporting or opposing things in the Ballard community. Then, we will seek and print each and every letter you send us whether it is for us or against us. We will not edit letters, or shorten them or "correct" them as we work on the principle that my error is your fact. Other readers will be free to comment on letters, columns and editorials and those comments will be printed. Count on it - I love those letters that begin, "You won't publish this, but . . . " That one may be the lead letter.

We seek longer Op-Ed pieces written by community leaders, or just people who live here. It must have a point, so don't simply meander and blather, because we will discuss those with you and once in a while, rarely we hope, we will spike the nonsense. Of course, libel and foul language is not accepted.

You want to meet with me, call me or e-mail me. My cell phone has voice mail and I answer it most hours. It is 206.369.6328, and the best e-mail is jmayne@robinsonnews.com - I am famous for answering e-mail in the wee hours or on weekends.

There will be regular columns on the future of this newspaper as I learn more about the community and the ways we can make Ballard a better place.

Let's do this together.

-Jack Mayne