Welcome to Wauwatosa Patch

Welcome to Wauwatosa Patch.

So, what the heck is Patch, anyway?

For our purposes here in Wauwatosa, it is a new source of community news and events, a forum for ideas and a meeting place over the digital back fence. We call it an online community newspaper, but that's only because I and most Patch people are newspaper-type journalists, and we all have some background in reporting news.

Accurately and fairly reporting the news is fundamental, but beyond that, in this digital realm, we can go many other places as well, as you'll see when you poke around today's Patch, and when you see what we have in store in coming days.

We start out by visiting Wauwatosa East High School, for instance, for a behind-the-scenes video of the making of a major musical production. We have a story by veteran business writer Laura Merisalo presenting the long-awaited details of the redevelopment of the former Derse property at 62nd Street and Martin Drive. And we introduce you to some exciting and chic changes to the already popular La Reve Cafe in the Village.

We have sports stories that bring you up to date on the progress of former Tosa East basketball star Jerry Smith toward reaching the NBA, and we take you inside the Tosa Baseball League's new indoor practice facility.

Not all the news is so good. Police are investigating chronic school vandalism in one case, and – I really would not have wished to have such a story to celebrate the launch of Wauwatosa Patch, but we think you would want to know – a Tosa man has been indicted on charges of having and distributing child pornography.

Taking the bad with the good is just a part of day-to-day life, and we will not sugarcoat the facts. But we do want to bring you all the good news we can, because Wauwatosa is brimming with it.

With that, a short note to let you know that there's much more here than you see on the main page. Just pull down the News tab and click Browse News to see everything that is posted. Stories can still be found there after new ones have replaced them on the front page.

This is a dynamic community where there is never any shortage of things to film and write about, and we hope you'll get in the act as well. There are places for commentary on our pages, and we only ask that people think of Patch – seeing as it is a community newspaper, and we're all neighbors in a way – as a place for polite discourse, even when we do not necessarily agree.

I've made Wauwatosa my home for 20 years, I've always liked it, and I like it more all the time. When I moved to Tosa, there was one restaurant in the Village. Now – well, I'd have to go check, because there might be a new one today, they're coming so fast. As a longtime dining writer, you may take my word that Wauwatosa is fast becoming the dining destination in metro Milwaukee.

The City of Milwaukee proper may still the heart of things, with its major cultural and financial institutions. But when you look at the metropolis, Wauwatosa is its lungs – the place where the oxygen of daily commerce is exchanged. The busiest retail center in the state is in Tosa. The largest medical center in the state is in Tosa. The busiest freeway interchange in the state is in Tosa. The most concentrated research center in southeast Wisconsin is in Tosa.

There are about 45,000 people living in Tosa, including children and retirees. There are 70,000 jobs in Tosa, or about two jobs for every working-age resident. Tosa is not and never has been a bedroom community. It is just the opposite, a destination for workers on a grand scale.

So finding news in Tosa will never be a problem. Finding time to cover all the news I would want to, that will be the problem.

That's Wauwatosa Patch, but you might also want to know where Patch came from. Wauwatosa Patch is one of more than 800 (and counting) Patch community newspapers started recently across the country by AOL. It's a network – a patchwork, if you will – of selected communities stretching from coast to coast. While typically each Patch focuses solely on its community, they are all linked, and the opportunity exists for sharing news, such as we did among all the Wisconsin Patches during the recent budget brouhaha in Madison.

Patch is something of a "Back to the Future" idea. Back to the days when the local newspaper editor was your nosy neighbor; futuristic in that in this digital age, we can all be neighbors, and we can exploit technologies the ink-stained wretches of old would never have dreamed.

I'm proud to be the editor of Wauwatosa Patch, and I hope you'll be pleased with what I and my colleagues produce. I've enjoyed a long career in journalism, and I've been very fortunate to find in Wauwatosa other talented professionals who will be regular contributors.

We all look forward to serving your hometown – because it's our hometown, too.