Fifty years ago this week, Ray Menaker launched this newspaper with the idea that it would seriously cover issues of interest.

In his first editorial on Jan. 3, 1966, Menaker wrote, “We intend to keep this a news paper with a few ads to make ends meet, not an advertising flyer with a little bit of news now and then.”

Menaker’s employees and their successors held true to his vision, perhaps too successfully. For the duration of its history, the CVN has strived to make its top priorities a fair and unvarnished accounting of what goes on in this valley, and a place where readers could air their views, as unpopular or painful as those stories and letters might be.

That’s a high standard for a newspaper in a town this small, and it has come at a cost – the broad support of business interests that could have made life much easier for the CVN. Many people believe a paper as small as ours should serve as a town booster, to give readers a “good feeling” about life here, with an emphasis on the positive. They consider our coverage too negative, too critical or too liberal.

Most CVN reporters over the years have, I think, shared Menaker’s outlook: That some things that happen in our town are good, some are bad and much falls in between, and that the newspaper’s job is to report what’s important, as closely and accurately as possible, and in plain language.

For the past two years, the CVN has been named Alaska’s Best Weekly Newspaper by the Alaska Press Club, the trade organization that represents the state’s media outlets. It’s a great honor, especially as the Chilkat Valley News is also one of the state’s smallest weeklies. Our award is owed mostly to the outstanding reporting of Karen Garcia, one of the finest journalists in the paper’s history.

Some people have characterized Garcia’s writing as “investigative.” Mike Sica, another of the great reporters to have worked here, liked to say that the term “investigative reporting” is a misnomer: The essence of reporting is to investigate, Sica would say, and reporting without investigating isn’t news.

As the CVN enters its sixth decade, we aim to honor Menaker’s vision and Sica’s perspective as well as the hard work done for low pay by two generations of employees who believed a newspaper – even a tiny one – has an important role to play in a community.

-Tom Morphet