Friday was a new day for me. I began the day as the new editor of the Maple Valley and Covington Reporter.

I live in Enumclaw, and my first task was to figure out how to get to the office with the Kummer Bridge closed. I was raised in Enumclaw, but I can still get lost when I head off toward the Green Valley Road, but I made it.

I have spent the past five years covering the communities of Bonney Lake and Sumner. Publisher Bill Marcum hired me in October 2003 when the Bonney Lake-Lake Tapps Courier-Herald began publishing. We expanded the paper into Sumner last year.

For nearly six years I covered news, politics, crime, sports and the daily life of the community around Lake Tapps. Together with Marcum, we have sponsored political debates, taken pictures of city-wide activities from pancake feeds to planting trees and became part of the daily life of the community.

Our plan is simple – cover the local news and activities.

I have covered community and state politics for 20 years, and I believe the work done by local political leaders and activists represents some of the best and brightest examples of American politics.

At the Maple Valley and Covington Reporter our commitment is to present the stories of your communities through the our paper and on our Web site.

We also want to hear from you. Please send us letters to let us know what you think. If you have a story that needs to be told, let us know. Maybe you can write or we will write. This is our community paper and publishing it is going to be a lot of fun.