When the Press Stops Rolling: What the Death of RN&R’s Print Edition Says About Journalism in Reno

Reno News & Review and Mike’s Reno Reports logos … we’d call them mastheads if in print.

Reno just lost another print newspaper. Again.

The Reno News & Review (RN&R) announced this week that it’s ending its print edition — the second time in recent years it has done so. For longtime readers, it’s déjà vu. First the racks disappeared and the paper went digital-only. Then, after a change in ownership, the presses started up again and the city’s coffee shops and breweries once more filled with those familiar stacks of RN&R issues.

Now, the presses are silent again.

The paper’s staff had once talked publicly about converting the RN&R into a nonprofit, a model that’s helped a few alt-weeklies survive elsewhere. There were even community gatherings — one memorable evening at Craft — where editors discussed their hopes for sustainability over pints of beer. But like too many good conversations in Reno, that one seems to have ended when the tab was paid.

Meanwhile, as traditional outlets contract, a new generation of independent reporters has been picking up the slack — often without the institutional backing, but with every bit as much rigor.

Take Mike Leonard, the man behind Mike’s Reno Report. He’s been tirelessly writing for about six months. The Reno Gazette Journal recently referred to Leonard as a “blogger” while covering his lawsuit against Alex Velto, Connor McQuivey, and Devon Reese. “Blogger” — as if deep-sourced local reporting, document digging, and public-record analysis somehow don’t count as journalism unless it comes with a corporate logo.

But Leonard’s work is journalism. He subscribes to the same information services and research platforms that mainstream reporters use. He cross-checks facts, reads the filings, and exposes stories others ignore. His work doesn’t come with a glossy masthead, but it does come with homework.

At Picon Press, we’ve taken our share of slings and arrows from elected officials who’d rather we stop asking questions. They call us “bloggers,” “hacks,” or worse — mostly because we don’t go away. We keep digging. We keep droning on about the same “tired” stories until the cracks start to show and the public starts asking those same questions too. Persistence may not make us popular, but it sure makes the truth harder to ignore.

So when legacy media dismiss independent reporters as hobbyists while their own print editions collapse, maybe it’s time to rethink who gets to wear the title “journalist.”

The irony is hard to miss. The traditional press, once the gatekeeper of local truth, is shrinking not just in pages but in perspective. Independent reporters like Leonard, meanwhile, are expanding the public record one PDF, one court filing, one phone call at a time.

Maybe the question isn’t why RN&R’s print edition died — it’s who’s still keeping local journalism alive.

And maybe, instead of rolling our eyes at “bloggers,” we should be grateful someone’s still rolling up their sleeves.