In the daily news our papers compete in 140 characters or less. We are working on the level with the people we serve - neighbors can now Tweet out news of a house fire in less time than it takes our journalists to log on to our phones. Thats a fundamental shift in the way we approach news. We are not the only means of distributing the message. What do I do? I try to make a connection. I connect the people that are the afflicted, the humble, the unknown or unsung, and I put their stories into the marketplace so that what they do might catch on. The Burbank Leader, like all community newspapers of 2013, still promotes and maintains that marketplace. This is what makes language so important our communities are predicated on capturing that conversation, shaping it, using language to build it into something meaningful, rather than a random mishmash of words. Perhaps now more than ever, though, it needs the input and contributions of its readership that inherent association Tocqueville talks about to serve its mission of community engagement.