Publisher's Note: News that matters from the communities we serve

Woosley is the president of Southern Newspapers and was named America’s Newspapers 2024 publisher of the year.

It’s a simple question, but an important one. Woosley described media coverage in Texas after the July 4 floods that killed at least 135 people. Large news outlets came to the disaster zone from all over the nation, spending days on the ground as they reported what was happening. Because of that coverage, people who had never heard of Kerr County, where the majority of people were killed, could now point to it on a map.

But when those national news organizations moved on to the next big story, local journalists remained. They knew the families affected by the flooding, whose lives were lost or changed forever. And those local papers were where people turned to get updated information — not only for residents, but for those in other states following the story.

And that’s what makes them — and 6,000 others — a great community newspaper.

“We aren’t always first, but we are the first to be right,” Woolsey said. That hit home for me since, as a weekly paper, we are not always first. And although we post many stories online between press days on columbiagorgenews.com, we are careful to have all of the facts before we publish, both online and in print. It’s important to us to report as accurately as possible based on available sources.

Week after week, Columbia Gorge News staff work to bring our local communities the news. News that matters. News that helps us better understand what is happening and why, from people who are part of the communities they serve.

It means something when you stand next to one of our staff members in line at the grocery store, when our children attend school together, when we come together in times of crisis — including the recent wildfires that affected Gorge residents on both sides of the Columbia River.

We are a small but mighty team and we truly care about the work we do.

I’d like to congratulate my staff for their commitment to being a trusted area news source, shown by the numerous awards won for our work in 2024, both in the Pacific Northwest and nationally. One that is particularly difficult to achieve but the most prestigious to receive is for General Excellence, and we won two, taking third place in the northwest and fourth nationally. This award always means a lot to us because it’s judged based on several editions chosen from randomly selected months and takes into account the paper in its entirety — news, design, articles, variety of content, legals and advertising. Visit columbiagorgenews.com for a full list of awards.

And please keep your positive comments coming in. We appreciate your support, and these notes uplift our often overwhelmed and tired staff, and we share them among our team.

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Chelsea Marr has been publisher/owner of Columbia Gorge News since its inception in April 2020. She combined three longstanding community publications into one regional newspaper after those publications shuttered in the early days of the pandemic to ensure local coverage continued in the Gorge.