By Jeff Clemetson

Just over three years ago, my wife and I moved from Ocean Beach and made La Mesa our home. We were attracted to the city’s quiet neighborhoods, welcoming downtown area and proximity to my wife’s family who have lived in the area for several decades.

Soon after purchasing our home, I started reading the La Mesa Courier. In its pages were stories that were foreign to me, at first, being a brand-new resident of the city. But the longer we lived here, the more I related to the issues chronicled in the paper. The more I read the paper, the more I felt connected to my new community.

I have been a journalist for half of my life. I’ve written for different online and print publications in the many places I’ve lived over the years, but I’ve never really described those jobs as writing and reporting about my home —until now.

As the new editor of the La Mesa Courier, I’m very excited to be more involved in the community I now call home and to report the events and issues that my neighbors care most about. La Mesa is a unique place to live, with unique people who live here and unique stories to tell. My goal as editor of the Courier is to help tell those stories.

In this issue, there are stories about the revitalization construction in La Mesa Village, local supermarkets that have closed and area hospitals that are growing. There are also reports on outstanding local teachers being honored and local students publishing books.

These are but a fraction of life in our city, and we can’t possibly report and publish it all, but I promise to do my best to write the stories important to this community. And I also promise to listen to you, the readers, about what those important stories are to you. I look forward to learning more about my new home city, La Mesa.

—Write to Jeff Clemetson at [email protected]