Welcome to the 2000th issue of Người Việt Tây Bắc.
Over the past 25 years, we have never missed a single issue. Our hard-working staff has persisted through snow storms, holidays, and major computer failure. And one generation later, we are still here. It is because of you, for you, that we continue to publish our newspaper. Without you, we would not have been able to come this far.
My parents founded Người Việt Tây Bắc, in a small office in Columbia City, in 1986. Now, my two younger brothers and I work at the newspaper, side-by-side our parents and our extended “family” of NVTB staff.
With the challenges the newspaper industry currently faces, it is not an easy business to be in. And yet throughout the week, our readers reward us with their smiles when they come to our office to pick up their copy of the newspaper.
Despite these challenges, we continue to grow. In the past two years alone, we have expanded our news coverage to over a hundred TV news reports for SBTN-Seattle, launched our online version, our Facebook page, an English language series, and become a focal point for ethnic media advocacy in Seattle.
We have been able to do this with an amazing team of people dedicated to making Người Việt Tây Bắc great. Those have been with us for years: Mỹ Đỗ, Hóa Nguyễn, KhoaNguyễn, Bảo Phạm, Đông Phương Lê. We are grateful to our loyal advertisers, many of whom have been advertising with us since they opened their businesses.
The newspaper has been fortunate to be reinvigorated with young contributors and a community that has nourished us. We thank Quỳnh Dao Trần and Eitan Nguyen for making our newspaper more beautiful. Phong Đặng, Hải Yến, Bảo Nguyễn, and Thế Anh Nguyễn have shared their stories. Vũ Le and Vi-văn Đanh are part of the extended NVTB family through SBTN-Seattle. Non-Vietnamese companies such as PqHost, Count on That, Comcast Spotlight, and Felix Connection have helped us grow our business.
Our newspaper has kept pace with the growth of the local Vietnamese community.
In preparing for this special edition, we asked our supporters to share their stories of the past 25 years of the local Vietnamese community.
We hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane.
