Message from the editor: on April 17, a different window on the world

There is an unspoken agreement between a newspaper and you, its readers. Our role is to provide you with the daily news, whether it's local, foreign or business, in sport or the arts. You read us rather than our competitors because you find our approach more appealing, our coverage more relevant to your tastes and needs.
Beyond mere factual reporting, we also offer insight and analysis of what is happening - and why - in the world around us. We want to be your window on the world: the entire world with all its glories, its horrors and its comical absurdities. We explain and we hope that we also entertain.
With so much happening around us, we cannot publish every story. We dispatch reporters to the events that we think you need to know about and would like to read about. We then aim to write the news so that you feel it, hear it, see it.
But a newspaper is not all words. We are visual creatures and pictures taken by talented photographers have the power to capture in a single image the absolute essence of a story, be it a heart-rending tragedy or a joyous triumph of the human spirit.
Tomorrow, The National turns six. Tomorrow the pen stops. Tomorrow we will show the news and let you, our readers, share with us what we see.
Mohammed Al Otaiba is The National's Editor-in-Chief