Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

In his 1989 book “The Lost Continent,” writer and social observer Bill Bryson goes looking for small-town America. His grim findings included Winfield, Iowa, a town he’d spent time in as a child.

“When I was growing up, Main Street in Winfield had two grocery stores, a variety store, a tavern, a pool hall, a newspaper, a bank, a barber shop, a post office, two gas stations – all the things you would expect of any thriving little town. Everyone shopped locally; everyone knew everyone else. Now all that was left was a tavern and a place selling farm equipment… I couldn’t understand what had happened,” Bryson wrote.

What happened in many American small towns was residents traded their stores and their jobs and most of their town for the lure of cheap consumer goods offered through box stores down the road – and the same thing happens today through Internet purchases.

As a society, we’re starting to understand that the trade those consumers made wasn’t a bargain, and that inexpensive merchandise is a small consolation if you or your neighbor is out of work and your town’s buildings are boarded up.

Because of our town’s remoteness and the tenacity of our shop owners, Haines is not Winfield, Iowa. We’re a port city with a certain amount of guaranteed traffic and a pretty place that people from many other places like to visit. Visitors help support our stores, which support our town in many ways.

But residents – those of us who live here – will be the ones who will decide the future of our small businesses. We’ll decide it with the purchasing decisions we make every day. If we’re loyal only to the lowest price tag, our town will eventually be reduced to a single box store likely owned by someone far away. And we’ll look a lot like Winfield.

In the spirit of supporting local businesses, the Chilkat Valley News recently decided it would no longer accept advertising from stores or businesses that directly compete with existing ones here. So you’ll no longer see the advertising flyer for the Whitehorse, Y.T. chain hardware store.

Our previous policy was to not solicit advertising from out-of-town competitor businesses. Our new policy is to refuse such advertising. This wasn’t an easy decision for us. The newspaper operates on a thin margin and we have effectively told a steady, paying customer that their money is no longer good here.

But the decision is consistent with our conviction that in terms of our town’s future, local businesses and customers are all in this together. We must support each other and trust that we’re making investments in our town’s permanence, even if that means giving up an extra dollar here and there.

- Tom Morphet