On Nov. 17, 1993, three Reno journalists—Mike Norris, Bill Martin and Larry Henry—published the first-ever issue of the Nevada Weekly. Right there and then, Reno joined the ranks of cities with alternative newsweeklies—courageous, authority-challenging, status-quo-questioning, truth-telling media outlets that prioritize local politics and arts.
In 1995, the Nevada Weekly became the Reno News & Review. Throughout the ’90s and 2000s, altweeklies enjoyed their heyday nationally. Today, there are fewer of us, and some that remain are now online-only or (as in the RN&R’s case) monthly in print. The road hasn’t always been easy—the COVID pandemic almost took the life out of us—but the RN&R is still here, and we’re still independent.
To celebrate our Big 3-0, founders, owners, staffers, former staffers and readers weighed in on what it’s been like to be part of the RN&R’s history. Several editors told stories about the blood, sweat, tears and ungodly numbers of hours it’s taken to keep the news coming out. Some sent in tales of the adventures they had along the way. Others shared moments of triumph. Several remembered the colleagues who kept them going. And, of course, the RN&R community sent in a good number of stories remembering the unshakable integrity of Reno legends Dennis Myers and Bruce Van Dyke.
—Kris Vagner
Best-ever calendar editor in the Biggest Little City
By Larry Henry, Nevada Weekly co-founder, now in Fayetteville, Ark.
I will always be grateful to the many people who worked hard to make the paper a success. One who exemplified that is Kelley Lang. Among other duties, Kelley made sure the events calendar was updated and accurate. On a weekly basis, the stories and photographs on the cover and inside the paper received attention, but in truth, a lot of readers picked up the paper each week because of how good the calendar was. We would not have survived without Kelley and people like her.
From an original founder: We nailed it
By Mike Norris, Nevada Weekly co-founder, now in Dallas
Bill Martin, Larry Henry and I were happy to help bring a voice to Reno different from and alternative to the usual corporate journalism. We feel we achieved the right voice for Reno, as attested to by this longstanding publication. We’re very pleased to see that it has endured so long, in a time of fast-changing media, and we encourage everyone to read it.
A road we’re proud to have taken
By Deborah Redmond and Jeff von Kaenel, former owners, Sacramento
In January 1995, we received a call from Bill Martin and Larry Henry, owners of the Nevada Weekly in Reno, telling us that they were shutting down the paper, effective immediately. Were we interested in taking it over?
We were.
The next month, News & Review purchased the assets of Nevada Weekly, and the Reno News & Review was born.
We moved up to Reno to help launch the new paper. When we arrived, we were inspired by the dedication of the staff and their commitment to using journalism to make a positive impact on the community. Jeff met with hundreds of people during those first few months and learned from them about the tremendous need to hear other voices and to get perspective on controversial issues; he was told that there was a good-old-boy network in Reno that controlled many aspects of community life.
There was a strong desire for independent journalism in Reno.
The RN&R quickly earned a healthy readership by challenging many of the area’s establishments—including city and state governments, the Reno Gazette-Journal and the casino industry. The RN&R also put a spotlight on the area’s growing arts community, publishing weekly film reviews, theater reviews, food reviews and arts stories. DJ Bruce Van Dyke covered cool culture in Reno in his column, “Notes From the Neon Babylon.” Bob Grimm wrote hundreds of movie reviews. The Best of Northern Nevada annual competition helped readers share their feedback about their favorite people, places and things in Northern Nevada.
In 2015, longtime editor Brian Burghart received recognition for creating a nationwide database documenting fatalities at the hands of the police, Fatal Encounters. We were also blessed to work with longtime news editor Dennis Myers, the most hard-working and best political reporter in Nevada, who worked doggedly to uncover important stories until the day he died in 2019.
Prior to COVID, the circulation of the RN&R was almost equal to that of the daily Reno Gazette-Journal. But in March 2020, when the COVID-19 shutdown was announced, RN&R’s advertising dried up almost overnight.
We were forced to suspend print publishing, but we continued with an online presence, overseen by award-winning editor Frank X. Mullen, who came out of retirement to cover what he said was “the story of a lifetime,” the COVID-19 pandemic. Frank was one of the most prolific and dedicated editors we’ve ever worked with, winning an award in 2021 for his investigation into the unmarked graves of around 200 children at the Stewart Indian School.
The paper had many hard-working editors over the years, including Brian Burghart and Jimmy Boegle; Larry Henry, the editor when we came to Reno; and Brad Bynum, our editor when the paper halted print publication. We had wonderful art directors, including Don Button, Andrea Diaz-Vaughn and David Jayne, and photographer David Robert. The paper would never have survived without the efforts of John Murphy, longtime publisher, and Bev Savage and Gina Odegard, whose advertising sales kept the paper alive for many years. We worked with many other dedicated people, too numerous to mention here.
We are incredibly proud that we were a part of the early history of the RN&R, and we are so happy to see that legacy continuing on under the inspired ownership of former editor Jimmy Boegle’s Coachella Valley Independent, and the leadership of another former RN&R editor, Kris Vagner.
Readers, please support independent journalism in Reno. It contributes to public awareness and engagement, puts a spotlight on voices that might not otherwise be heard, and contributes to the overall vibrancy of the greater Reno community.
The rise of the fledging weekly, as seen from my desk at the daily
By Frank Mullen, editor at large and former editor
In the winter of 1993, when the first issue of the Nevada Weekly hit the stands across Northern Nevada, the scribblers at the Reno Gazette-Journal had mixed reactions.
The daily newspaper’s reporters, in general, welcomed the newcomer to the local media landscape. Gazette-Journal executives, mindful of a corporate culture that loathed competition in any of its markets, worried the alternative weekly would bleed dollars from the RGJ’s advertising revenue.
At the time, I was an assistant city editor at the Gazette-Journal. Some managers grumbled that the fledgling newspaper (later renamed the Reno News & Review) wasn’t needed in Northern Nevada. Reno, they argued, was too small to support it. It didn’t make them feel any better that the trio who founded the paper—Mike Norris, Bill Martin and Larry Henry—were experienced and respected writers who knew the state and its issues. In addition, they fretted, Norris and Henry were Gazette-Journal alums who might take aim at the way the local daily did its job.
But RGJ reporters thought holding their employer accountable for the way it covered the community and did business was a good idea. And they understood that completion raises the bar for everyone. What good is an exclusive “scoop” if your publication is the only print outlet in town? The consensus was that as long as the new rag’s coverage was fair and accurate, the RGJ had nothing to worry about.
Meanwhile, the suits in the glass offices hoped the weekly would be short lived. It wasn’t.
Editions of the RN&R rolled off the presses week after week and quickly appeared on the desks of reporters and editors at the daily. As predicted, the paper occasionally did stories about the inner workings of the RGJ. Articles included the tale of a publisher who held a seat on the board of directors of a major casino company that the daily covered; stories about the newsroom’s frequent rounds of layoffs and buyouts; and a report on an incident in which Pinkerton agents fanned out through the Gazette’s building after 3 a.m., rubbing cotton swabs across employees’ desktops to test for molecular traces of illegal drugs—presumably secreted in the sweat of the people who worked at those desks in the daytime. (There was plenty of sweat in the newsroom, but no traces of contraband were found.)
It was the stuff Gazette-Journal reporters knew but couldn’t write about. And the RN&R’s reports were usually fair and accurate. When the RGJ broke a great story, the upstart weekly reported that, too.
As the decades flew by, the weekly paper (often in the person of the late Dennis Myers) sometimes scooped the RGJ. We’d take the hit—and then go out for beers with our rivals.
The Gazette-Journal’s newsroom hosted a weekly ritual. Each Thursday, the latest RN&R would arrive, and reporters would pore over it cover to cover. The top editors would, too, but they hated to see anything critical of the RGJ or spot a piece about something we missed but should have reported. They would often howl and say words they did not learn from their mothers.
My last editor at the RGJ was among the best howlers and cursers. She would hold out the latest RN&R, point to a story and let loose a tirade that often included the words “bullshit!” and “those bastards.”
A few weeks before I took a buyout at the RGJ in 2013, I discovered that my editor and the RN&R editor had been discretely dating. Yet she continued to put on the weekly show in the newsroom, blasting her beau and his publication with the zeal of a small-town preacher describing hellfire.
One has to keep up appearances, I suppose. Happy 30th birthday, RN&R!
Remembering Dennis Myers: The late news editor’s work ethic—and love—still ring strong
By Jeri Chadwell, former associate editor
The newsroom was too quiet after Dennis Myers died. He may not have talked very much or very loudly, but it was still too quiet in the space where he’d been a fixture for many years, before I’d even joined the ranks of working journalists, and where everyone present was lost deep within their own sorrow. Inside of my head, all of the lessons I’d absorbed from my friend and mentor seemed unable to find purchase.
A flood of recollections came in from the people whose lives Dennis touched. Still, nothing filled the silence left in the wake of the day-to-day sounds of him—like his answering the phone and saying only, “News,” with no niceties, or the scratching of his green-ink pen taking notes for a story of his own or leaving notes on one of ours. The silence was so loud I couldn’t hear the way Dennis’ love and lessons were echoing even then through the actions of everyone around me.
Today, I’m so glad I kept a copy of Volume 25, Issue 30, of the News & Review that memorialized my beloved friend and mentor. It’s a perfect issue, from the letters to the editor to the regular contributors’ columns and cartoons, to the gorgeous design that maximizes space for text (something he’d have particularly appreciated).
Dennis might have caught a few copy errors in that Sept. 5, 2019, issue, but I have no doubt he would be pleased with the people whose contributions to it reflect his singularly gentle, succinct and thoughtful heart and who bared their own hearts in its pages.
I wish for all of us that we’d had longer to receive Dennis’ input in real time, but it gives me joy when I reread the memorials written about him, and then see the people who wrote them doing things that would make him proud, things that would pique his interest and get him asking questions.
I like to look back on the stories Dennis wrote and see where those topics land in our current discourse. I like to look at what the people who informed his weekly submissions to the paper are doing now. I like getting to see his influence on myself and others every day.
Just recently, I read that Sheila Leslie, who wrote the paper’s “Left Foot Forward’’ column for years, is leaving Reno. Her presence will be missed in this community. I’ll always recall what Sheila wrote in Dennis’ memorial issue about his “unfiltered voice reflecting his personal sensibilities and his uncanny ability to analyze the political noise of the day and still remain upbeat and optimistic about our country and its people.” I recall what he wrote only weeks before about Sheila, who as a state senator had been the sponsor “of Senate Joint Resolution 15, which became ballot Question Two of 2014” that asked Nevada voters if the longstanding net proceeds tax cap of 5 percent on mining written into the Nevada Constitution should be removed.
There are so many of us who recall having received Dennis’ thorough, green-inked edits on stories for the paper or his thoughtful holiday presents wrapped in plain green paper. I received more than my fair share of each of these gifts. But by far the greatest gift I received from Dennis Myers has been the opportunity to get to know his granddaughter, Ali Myers Dean.
Ultimately, it took Ali to show me that there was no silence welling up to fill the space left by Dennis—only a need to look closer and reflect upon the gift he was in each of our lives, including a life I knew basically nothing about before his passing.
I knew of Ali Myers Dean, but I’d never met her until Dennis’ memorial service at the McKinley Arts and Culture Center. If you haven’t gotten the chance to know her, I can tell you Ali’s a lot like Dennis. She’s kind, courageous, intelligent, independent and a very private person.
Ali lives in Lansing, Mich. When she’s not working, she volunteers her time as a board member and the secretary of a nonprofit called Punks With Lunch Lansing. It offers meals to the hungry, community support programs and harm-reduction services like the distribution of Narcan overdose-reversal kits and safe consumption supplies.
Ali says it can sometimes be strange to consider the celebrity of her grandfather and hear the perspectives of all of the people whose lives he touched, but she doesn’t begrudge others’ experiences with or love for Dennis.
“He definitely became a bit of a celebrity in his own regard over the years,” she said. “But to me, he was just the ‘grandsir’—who had the weird request of being called ‘grandsir’ because it was a more distinguished version of grandpa.”
Ali recalls Dennis sending her Wonder Woman comics and having lengthy correspondence with him over email. For years, she’s taken her daughter, Bean, to pass out sack lunches to people in need during Punks With Lunch events.
Ali has the word “love” written in Dennis’ handwriting tattooed on her arm.
“Because that’s what I think of when I think of him,” she said. “A lot of people probably think of this kind of dweeby guy who would tell really good stories, but, to me, he was safety and home. It’s really moving to see him looked up to as this public figure, because I look up to him, too. I just got to see a little bit of a different side.”
Here’s to all of the sides of Dennis Myers each of us got to know. And here’s to all of you who look up to him and miss him to this day. We’re in good company—and that’s why we should look to one another to hear his voice when we miss him. Look to the kind words he spoke, the good work he did and his lessons that stick with us.
Here’s a hot tip, though, for those of you who find yourselves just wanting to hear Dennis’ voice and see his face: Go to the website for the show Nevada Newsmakers (www.nevadanewsmakers.com). From there, you can search the archives to pull up episodes where Dennis was the guest of host Sam Shad.
The ‘RN&R; seduced me before I was old enough to drive
By Brad Bynum, former freelancer, arts editor, managing editor and editor
Remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world (you) would most want to read. … The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself.
—J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
Over the years, to innumerable interns, journalism students and greenhorn freelancers, I’ve said that the key to writing well is to “remember that you were a reader before you were a writer.” Usually, I remember to mention that I borrowed that line from Salinger. He was writing about fiction, but it applies to journalism as well. Journalists shouldn’t invent stories, but they should write prose they’d want to read. Just like artists should make what they want to see, and musicians should make what they want to hear.
I bring that up now, because, despite writing for the Reno News & Review in various capacities for more than 20 years, when I clear my mind and ask myself, “What does the RN&R mean to me?” I don’t picture myself writing stories, or editing pages, or coaching freelancers, or approving cover designs, or working late deadlining a big issue. No, I picture myself reading. I picture myself as a teenager, sometime in the late ’90s, sitting in the Truckee Bagel Company shop near Galena High School, devouring the newspaper while nibbling a sesame bagel with strawberry cream cheese. That’s right, I nibbled the bagel, but I devoured—I scarfed—the newspaper.
It’s hard to imagine now just how important the RN&R was to a disaffected Reno teen like me back in ye olde 1990s. This was before social media, and the internet was still in its infancy. And, back then, Reno was a different place. It was, to put it politely, a hick town. There wasn’t much of interest here for creative young people. There was no Holland Project, and the casinos were geared toward adults. It was the kind of town that smart people, creative people, ambitious people and weird people just left. The kids I knew wanted to leave. The young adults I knew who had already left were happy they had. It was so much better in Portland.
But the RN&R didn’t fit that narrative. When I read the RN&R, I didn’t see a podunk paper about a podunk town. The RN&R staked a claim: Here was a forum for progressive voices that held the casinos and the smarmy politicians accountable. Here was a paper that knew bike lanes were important. (This was the 1990s, and that was a controversial opinion.) Here’s a newspaper where the writers said “fuck,” and they thought marijuana should be legal. Here’s a paper that reflected a city that takes its arts seriously. There were good bands here. Good artists. Good theater companies. Good restaurants. Great bars.
And good writers. I remember laughing out loud while reading Bob Grimm’s movie reviews and Bruce Van Dyke’s columns. I remember reading Brian Burghart’s restaurant reviews—anybody else remember when Brian was the restaurant reviewer?—and Jimmy Boegle’s editor’s notes. I remember reading editorials that made me think about local issues in a way that I never had before. I remember feeling proud that such good writing existed in my town. I imprinted on the RN&R like some sort of baby animal in search of a mother. (Please forgive the “imprinted” pun.)
The RN&R made me want to write for the paper. It made me think Reno was a town that would someday have a fantastic arts scene. And that’s partly because the RN&R covered the arts here, and empowered local artists to develop. The RN&R made me think Reno had potential. The RN&R convinced me that Reno was a place to live and to create.
Over the years, as the city has changed and so have I, I’ve come slowly to regret my decision to stay here. The RN&R seduced me into loving Reno, and, for that, I’ll never forgive it.
A feisty weekly miracle: The first female ‘RN&R’ editor-in-chief waxes nostalgic
By Deidre Pike, former contributor and editor, now in Arcata, Calif.
My stint at Nevada Weekly, the RN&R’s precursor, started in 1993 when editor Larry Henry assigned me a theater review and told me how to write it. In 2001-2002, I spent a heady year as editor-in-chief. In 2011, I wrote my last RN&R column, titled “Leaving Reno,” about my move to O‘ahu for a tenure-track job teaching journalism at the University of Hawai‘i.
I was a cocksure college kid when I started writing for the paper. I didn’t know a damn thing.
“Life is long and full of twists and turns,” I tell college journalists. These days, I teach journalism and advise The Lumberjack student newspaper at Cal Poly Humboldt in Way Northern California. Yup, I am that cringy college professor who tells stories from Back in the Day to illustrate lessons learned.
Here are a few:
Journalists get shit done. In 1995, I was a journalism major at the University of Nevada, Reno, and news editor of the Nevada Sagebrush. New RN&R editor R.V. Scheide assigned me a cover story about a Nevada Gaming Control employee charged with hacking gaming machines. Scheide said he needed 2,000-ish words in four days. He said I could do it. His faith in me fueled 106 hours of intense reporting and writing. I combed newspaper clips at the library. I made calls from my Sparks bedroom, interviewing Gaming Control sources and trying to reach the hacker, out on bail, in Vegas. I called every person with his last name in the phone book. Yes, phone book. Only privileged few then possessed what people called “email.” Four days later, I turned in my first RN&R cover story. I was on the road to fortune and fame with a check for $100.
Tits up. In the 1990s and 2000s, altweeklies were progressive tabs most often run by snarky, hyper-educated white guys. Think David Carr, the brilliant editor of Washington City Paper. At the end of 2001, in dire, post-Sept. 11, no-advertising-revenue straits, I was promoted from news editor to be the RN&R’s first female editor-in-chief. The boss didn’t hire a new news editor, so I did both jobs with the help of editorial superheroines Adrienne Rich and Carli Cutchin. The three of us reveled in a news environment free from mansplaining. We juiced our ovaries all over the paper, exploring birth control, girl skaters, “Music With Mammaries,” women who were religious leaders and “Getting Women Off the Streets.”
Carli cooked up an idea to re-create the “American Gothic” painting for the 2002 Election Guide. David “Foto” Robert, photojournalist and our token male, took pics of stoic lesbians smoking weed, pitchfork in hand, in front of a school bus with the headline “Confused? Curious?” For coverage of Nevada’s Ballot Question 2, the so-called “Marriage Protection” act, our office bride-to-be put on her poofy white dress and gussied it up with a military helmet and an automatic weapon. Damn, that was a good cover.
Don’t be boring. Design matters. Headlines matter. Whether you’re making social media or a print publication, gather engaging words and images. A couple months after Sept. 11, we put a photo of a Reno Muslim Nadiah Beekun on the cover of the paper with a story written by local news legend Guy Richardson. Foto took Nadiah’s picture on a skateboard and playing basketball. The goal was to smush readers’ biases to smithereens. Foto won a Nevada Press Association award for his cover portrait of Nadiah. Were biases smushed? Good question.
Embrace advocacy. A journalist’s job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to quote fictitious booze slinger Mr. Dooley. It’s OK, I advise college journalists, to take a feisty position. Be transparent about it. Are we often preaching to the choir? Sure. Hell yeah. Somebody’s gotta educate the allies.
I tell students about the 2004 election season when then-editor D. Brian Burghart put President George Bush on the cover with devil horns and a forked tongue for my cover story “No More Years.” Admittedly, Horny Devil Bush might not be the best example of how to exercise freedom of the press. Image ad hominem, though fun, does not an effective argument make. Better to imagine alternatives, to challenge the corporate capitalist narrative with stories about public transportation and creative housing solutions. One of my favorite cover stories explored the political idea of anarchy as an alternative form of consensus governance for communities.
Bottom line, youngsters: Enjoy your First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press while you still can. Dictator-hopeful Trump thinks journalists are disgusting.
Mistakes happen. Some confessions: In flood coverage, I misreported the flow of the Truckee River by a power of 10. Our high school intern caught the mistake. I once misidentified a police officer by the wrong last name throughout an entire profile of said officer. I didn’t catch a misspelled word on the paper’s cover.
I tell my students that brain farts and typos happen. We correct our errors and move on. A print newspaper is a glorious miracle with tons of original content created on deadline.
Who does this? Not academics. Don’t get me started.
Journalists get shit done.
Fond memories of grueling work, wild times and stories that mattered
By D. Brian Burghart, former editor
I haven’t been privy to the planning for this 30th anniversary issue of the Nevada Weekly/Reno News & Review, but I know a bit about how journalists think, so I imagine there will be some thumb-sucking pieces about how impactful this newspaper has been, because writers in general and journalists in specific want to believe they made a difference.
Take it from me: There were many people who worked at that paper who constantly thought about the newspaper’s place in Reno’s history. It was serious shit. I mean, did you ever meet Mike Norris or Dennis Myers?
I wasn’t one of them. I stayed at that paper from 1993 until 2016—on and off—because it was a blast. I feel obligated to say, sure, there were parts of the job that sucked: low pay, the grind of deadlines, the mendacity of humans, excuses, excuses, excuses. But that’s stuff you get used to. It’s like adding a space after a period; you don’t even think about it.
I remember the first time I heard of the Nevada Weekly. Mike Norris and Larry Henry called me at my duplex in Stead and offered me $25 a week to do their nightclubs grid. The “clubs grid” was their method of showing all the live music that was happening in the region. They called me because I had a passing knowledge of QuarkXPress, the design application, from a magazine editing class. The job changed, but the pay didn’t. I worked more than 80 hours per week for that 25 bucks for … I can’t even remember how long. Don’t get me wrong; I was not alone in that office. I’d never seen commitment like I saw when we were trying to get that paper off the ground. I was also tending bar at San Pauli so I wasn’t broke, and Norris, Henry and Bill Martin generously gave me stock certificates in lieu of pay.
Please forgive me as I just begin regurgitating anecdotlets. Thirty years of memories are impossible to relate in any kind of detail. Even if that’s only one memory a week, well, we were up to shenanigans almost every single day.
It’s odd to include a recitation of happy memories with a difficult one, but I wrote a cover story, my first “true crime” story, about some murders that happened at U-Haul on Virginia Street. It was a horrific crime that took place in January 1994. I did my usual thing: discovered every detail in the public record, interviewed everyone I could and looked at the nightmarish photographs. My boss at the time wanted me to spin the story to focus on one of the killers’ low IQ results—he was up for the death penalty. The thing was, the murderer spoke English as a second language, and the IQ test was administered in English. He wasn’t low IQ, and I couldn’t bring myself to write it as though he was. I got fired. The editor, R.V. Scheide, and I eventually forgave each other, and we’re still good friends today, but it was a crucial lesson about that organization. I later witnessed the murderer’s execution, and those scars never healed.
Of all the great covers that appeared on that fishwrap, the “butt” cover stands out in my mind. The story was “Invasion of the Tree Huggers,” and it was about a writers’ conference at Truckee Meadows Community College that focused on the environment. Photographer Don Dondero loaded Scheide, myself and Carmen Price into his Cadillac, bought us some peppermint schnapps, and drove us to Galena Park, where there were about two feet of fresh snow. We disrobed and tiptoed around to find a line of trees, which we wrapped our arms around, while Dondero shot too many iterations of the image. I don’t recall how many distribution points that cover got us kicked out of, but Dondero said it was the greatest photojournalism he ever did.
I think the Sherrie Doyle story was the first story I worked on with Jimmy Boegle after he became editor. A source I’d worked with on other stories, Beth Miramon, came to me and basically laid out the documents showing she’d given a city councilperson some $40,000 in loans for her election efforts (and whatever else she wanted to spend it on). I can’t remember how many felony counts she was charged with, but I do remember Doyle made me sit and wait for her for four hours to do the “hard” interview. Let me pass along this piece of advice to public servants: If a reporter waits four hours for you past a scheduled interview time, you’d best slip out the back door.
Man, the Christmas parties, the Biggest Little Best of Northern Nevada parties, Friday nights at the Blue Lamp (then Chewy and Juggs, then the Green Room). The arts festivals, Nada Dada and Burning Man. Sheesh, the arts scene and the artists who fueled it. Our Best Of artists!
The music and how we covered it. I remember one time I played roadie for Phat Couch. We drove my 1964 Mercury Park Lane to Sacramento. We snapped the drive on the distributor on the way home, about Auburn. A tow truck driver showed up just a few minutes later and said he’d drive us to Reno for $100. We all rode in the backward-towed car, blasting rock ’n’ roll and smoking cigarettes. The thing was, the tow truck driver had punctured the gas tank, and we were spewing gasoline the whole way home. That story produced one of my favorite lines I ever wrote: “(Scott) Loring follows up his inquiry with a joke so foul that, after floating it past everyone I talked to in the next few days, I decided it was unsuitable for a fucking family newspaper.”
I can’t imagine that a recitation of the names of the people who sacrificed so much to make this paper exist won’t get cut, but I don’t know who else will remember them. Bruce Van Dyke, Don Dondero and Dennis Myers are fondly remembered. Still, there were others throughout the years who might get missed: Connie Phylis, Tracy Panzarella, Reid Walley, Karl Larson, Jeff von Kaenel, Deborah Redmond, Don Button, David Jayne, Erik Espe, Wishelle Banks, Deidre Pike, Carli Cutchin, Miranda Jesch, David Robert, Bob Wilkie, Eric Marks, Bob and Michael Grimm, Kat Kerlin, Jeri Chadwell, Peter Thompson, Erik Holland, Brad Bynum, Bob Speer, Jill Kaiser, Melinda Welsh, Anne Lesemann, Laura Compton, Brad Summerhill, Kelley Lang, Jennifer Northcutt—I can’t begin to think of all the people who deserve mentions for their serious contributions to Reno’s cultural lynchpin.
John Murphy and I made beautiful music together for a long time. Who could forget all the freelance writers and columnists, distribution drivers and managers who got the paper out every week, all the incredibly creative designers who made it look great, and, of course, all the salespeople who had to try to explain why we’d use the word “fuck” in a newspaper children might see?
In researching this little remembrance, I came across the first website I wrote in HTML while I was on family leave for the birth of my kid, Hunter. There are lots of pre-RN&R-internet stories on there that aren’t available anywhere else. Some of the links are broken, like the links to the memories in my mind, but I know some people will find some proof here of how impactful this newspaper has been, and that we did indeed make a difference.
Working with Bruce Van Dyke was the best
By Bob Grimm, film reviewer
I’ve been with the RN&R for 28 of its 30 years, writing the silly movie reviews.
At the ripe old age of 27, I started faxing my reviews to the editors (they would later introduce me to the wonders of email), begging for a shot. I wanted Reno to have a local movie reviewer they could hate, and judging by many of the letters I’ve received throughout the decades, I think I succeeded.
At the time I started reviewing films, movie reviews were still really “stuffy.” I wanted to write in a conversational way, like some dude barking at the screen from the back of the theater, Mystery Science Theater 3000-style. Having recently gone back and read some of my older submissions, including my very first (a scathing review of Wes Craven’s A Vampire in Brooklyn), I see that I haven’t changed much.
I’ve worked with a lot of editors, too many to list, during my stretch. (Actually, I must list one here, the incomparable Jimmy Boegle! Thanks for bringing us back, Jimmy!) Many of my favorite writers and contributors are no longer present in the paper, including my beloved brother Mike’s now-dormant comic strips (“The Last Days of Roland & Cid” and “Apoca Clips” … hey, Mike, you need to start doing “Apoca Clips” again!) and perhaps my most favorite editorial column ever, “Notes From the Neon Babylon.”
If I have anything I am most thankful for in regards to this publication, it’s that it got me closer to the author of “Neon Babylon,” my dear, departed friend, the absolutely brilliant and hilarious Bruce Van Dyke.
Until my reviews started showing up in this paper, my relationship with Bruce was mostly work. I was a part-time DJ for him and had graduated to selling ads for his KTHX radio. My communications with him were brief (“Hey Grimm, I need you to do an overnight.” “Hey Bob, go make a cold call!”), but when he started to notice the reviews in the paper a few pages away from his own column, he invited me to share the airwaves with him on KTHX.
For a few years, I got to sit in a room with Bruce and talk movies with him on Friday mornings—and those were some of the most fun times of my professional career. We were able to use his radio show as not just a platform for our banter, but to promote the paper itself, and I think those morning segments really helped to bring the paper into the limelight.
We were also big fans of each other’s writing. Bruce would, sometimes, call me out of the blue just because he was cracking up at some goofy line I put in one of my reviews. I would do the same when I’d catch some of his mind-blowing comedy in his column. He really was an amazingly insightful humorist and would often write things that he and only he could come up with.
So, yeah, more so than my own wonderful, ongoing experience with RN&R, I just wanted to take this moment in time to celebrate the mighty BVD. For me, his contribution to this paper stands among its most prominent, most important and most scathingly hilarious. What a privilege it was to work alongside him—and know him. He will always be one of my heroes.
Photographing from the front row
By David Robert, photo editor
“A photographer walks into a bar.” It sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? But it was actually the beginning of my career in photojournalism.
In the spring of 1998, I was photographing Reno’s burgeoning music scene on a Friday night. I strolled into the old Blue Lamp bar on Sierra Street to shoot the infamous band Phat Couch, with its colorfully flamboyant lead singer, Steve Foht, and groovy, crazy band. I ran into Brian Burghart, whom I had worked with back in the late ’80s at Eddie’s Fabulous ’50s casino and who was now the associate editor of the RN&R. He saw my camera and said, “Hey, we need a photographer at the RN&R.” I gave him my number and thought nothing more of it.
On the following Monday, Brian called and asked to see my portfolio. I gathered up my “pretty” pics of landscapes, architecture and glamor portraits, and met Brian and then-editor Larry Henry (editor No. 1) at the Center Street office. Larry said, “These photos are great, but what did you shoot last weekend?” Eagerly, I pulled out a stack of photos of Phat Couch’s boozy, debaucherous show with the wild, neo-hippie audience. I then presented photos of the mad-scientist rockabilly group The Atomics and their onstage whiskey baptism; Gunshot Licker, with the cow-punk slinky lead singer/guitarist Stacey Tolle; and the cadaverous, undertaker-looking, fiery-twanging-guitar-playing Johnny Fingers.
Larry said, “OK, you’re in,” and assigned me to shoot a local politician who was having domestic trouble. Larry and Brian said to photograph him up his nose. “What?” I thought. This was the antithesis of the type of photography that I was used to. Welcome to photojournalism!
Larry was the first of six editors I was to work with over the years. Next was Jimmy Boegle, who is now the owner and publisher. Jimmy showed me the ropes of photojournalism, as he was a graduate from Stanford University. He took me from being a contributing photographer to being RN&R’s photo editor. Business cards and all! Thank you, Jimmy. He and I attended an Elton John concert at the Lawlor Events Center. This was the night I first heard term “shutter monkey,” which Jimmy said lovingly referring to photographers. I’ve fondly embraced this moniker. (Wait for my book, Confessions of a Rock ’n’ Roll Shutter Monkey.)
Deidre Pike was a sweetheart of an editor; she pushed my photographic creativity and encouraged me to write more. She told me to write “like I was just telling someone a story.” She and I once worked on a story at the Moonlite BunnyRanch with owner Dennis Hoff. It was beyond surreal—like a Fellini film. After spending the evening observing the behind-the-scenes goings-on at the Bunny Ranch, we joined pimpmeister Hoff and some of the “girls” for dinner at a Carson City Chinese restaurant. The restaurant’s owner’s wife was shooting looks like deadly daggers at her husband as he fawned over his flirtatious guests.
Next up was Brian Burghart, the man who had kicked off this whole debacle for me. Brian said to me, “Do as I say, and we will win awards.” And awards, we won: 30-plus awards for photography from the Nevada Press Association, national awards for photography and design, general excellence for the paper overall, and far too many other awards for the RN&R to name here. Brian and I had many, many adventures together, like the time we were at a charity event, and a “McMascot” was there to add some color to the proceedings. Brian interviewed him for the 15 Minutes section of the paper and tried to get him to say whether he was indeed the real “McMascot.” The poor clown kept dodging Brian’s questions and was clearly flummoxed, as his answers became increasingly dodgy. He claimed to be the only true version of the character in the country—doubtful. That was some good comedy. Also, for a “24 Hours in Reno” story, Brian stayed awake for 24 hours wandering the city to see what was open and what was shakin’. I followed him around with my camera. I think that after hour 18, I scuffled off home to bed.
I left the RN&R in 2008 and opened up my business, Biggest Little City Photography. The pandemic shut down the paper version of the RN&R, but when Jimmy bought the paper in January 2022, the “band” of sorts was put back together, and the paper soon returned to print. I came home to the RN&R with my next editor, Nevada Newspaper Hall of Famer Frank X. Mullen. Frank not only heroically held the paper together, but also reawakened the journalistic influence in me. Frank and I became fast friends and have headed off on many adventures, including our recent, precarious trek through the High Rock Canyon. It’s been a real treat to work with Frank, who has decades of award-winning journalistic experience and is always willing to share it with me and the writers.
Accomplished art maven Kris Vagner (with whom I had worked with and collaborated with in the mid-2000s at the RN&R) is now the managing editor. Kris and I, too, have had some adventures, like the time we observed the creation of gigantic teapots (think Alice in Wonderland) in a kiln up in the freezing high desert in the middle of winter. Very cold weather, very hot kiln.
At the RN&R, I’ve photographed everyone from the person on the street to movie stars and from presidents to porn stars (clothed). (I’m sure that there is a joke in there about presidents and porn stars.) Yes, it’s been a long, beyond-strange trip, and I’m looking forward to many more years at the RN&R.
A couple of decades in ‘a front-row seat’
Kelley Lang, former arts editor and longtime calendar editor
Thirty years is a long time, but it seems like yesterday when I wrote my first articles for the Nevada Weekly, in 1994. I was a journalism student at the University of Nevada, Reno, who needed to get some “real world” experience. The gig didn’t last long, and neither did the paper. A year later, the Nevada Weekly was sold to publishers Jeff von Kaenel and Deborah Redmond and renamed the Reno News & Review.
In 1997, I got my first job working at the RN&R as an editorial assistant, which eventually evolved into the calendar editor position, a role I would occupy for the better part of my 20-odd years with the newspaper. I took event announcements that had been submitted to the calendar and condensed them down to the basics every week. It wasn’t a high-profile job like news editor or columnist, but I was content staying behind the scenes and playing a supporting role over the decades—from the early days when the RN&R was the plucky, new kid on the block through the latter years when it had grown to be a respected, award-winning newspaper.
I had a front-row seat, watching the area’s politicians, activists and other movers and shakers, as well as local gadflies and other colorful characters, as they’d stop by the office to talk about important issues or just shoot the breeze with the editors. I had the opportunity to interview people from various walks of life and write about almost anything ranging from archaeological digs to swingers’ conventions.
But the best part of the job was working with so many talented, creative and interesting people who made up the editorial, sales, office management and distribution departments of the newspaper over the years. We were all a part of this long, strange trip that almost came to an end in 2020. But thanks to our loyal readers and supporters, and the efforts of a few tenacious souls who kept the publication alive during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the RN&R has managed to make it to this milestone.
Congratulations, Reno News & Review. May the next 30 years be as brilliant as your first.
This article was updated on Dec. 1 to correct a former staffer’s title.
Where and how is Corey Farley doing?
He’s still here, and by all accounts (based on his Facebook page), he’s doing just fine.