Readers of the West Seattle Herald and White Center News have told us they enjoy the columns we run on a semi-regular basis.

These have spanned the range from the humor of Jerry Robinson's left handed approach to life (See Page 5), to Lori Hinton's discovery of many more than 101 Things to Do in West Seattle. Georgie Bright Kunkel looks at life from a feminist crusader who also is an octgenarian. Movies at the resurging Admiral Theatre have been reviewed by Bruce Bulloch, and the fascinating memories of growing up in West Seattle and living in it to the most have come from Marc Calhoun. We have taken a long look into Children and More with Lauri Hennessey and heard about the wide array of books at Seattle libraries in the Bookshelf column. And, never forget West Seattle cops, wonderfully chronicled for good or ill by Megan Sheppard - leave that out of the paper at an editor's peril.

But we recently lost a columnist who will be hard to replace but whose voice represented a group often left entirely out of modern newspapers, forcing them to the Internet and You Tube and Facebook, with some i-Pod tossed in. Kyra-lin Hom for over two years told us about her views of West Seattle, of the world, of her school and of her life In Transition. Kyra-lin is in college now, adjusting to a new set of experiences and challenges - plus she had to do that college in (gasp!) Los Angeles.

We need a new teen columnist. One who lives and goes to one of the four high schools in our coverage area. So if you have wide views, even radical views, of West Seattle and White Center and go to West Seattle High, Evergreen High, Chief Sealth or Seattle Lutheran High and live to write and love to view the world around you and how it affects you and your fellow teens, then we need to talk.

We believe that when you hire a columnist, you let him or her do the writing and we do not censor or object to most things, for that is what a free press is all about. So the latitude is there to tell your parent's generation, and the wider public, how it is to be a high school student and a teen in this crazy new century.

To strart the process, e-mail me something about you and some ideas for a column that will be printed (and on-line) every two weeks (you have to meet deadlines). Send an e-mail to jackm@robinsonnews.com and we will take it from there.

- Jack Mayne