In April 2022, Emerson Drewes, then a 19-year-old sophomore, became the editor in chief of The Nevada Sagebrush, the University of Nevada, Reno’s student newspaper.
The Sagebrush went all-digital after 2021 due to the closure of Northern Nevada’s last printing press, but Drewes and the staff still call it a “newspaper.”
Drewes grew up in Las Vegas, in a family that lived on a steady diet of news—FOX5, celebrity news like E! and TMZ, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which still arrives on her parents’ doorstep daily. She enrolled at UNR as a business major but soon switched to journalism.
By the time she became the Sagebrush editor, she had already gained her sea legs in the field as the newspaper’s news editor—but the sudden, mid-semester promotion made her feel like she had some big shoes to fill.
“There was nobody there to train me into the position,” she told me as she sat behind a large desk that faces her always-open office door. (She wants both her staff and the public to feel like they can come talk with her anytime.)
Those figurative shoes soon got even bigger: Within days, Amy Koeckes, a UNR staff member who oversees student media, among other things, came to a Sagebrush staff meeting.
“She only joins if there’s something really bad,” Drewes said.
Koeckes announced that the Sagebrush, which has been publishing since 1893, was quickly running out of money—and needed to make changes to remain sustainable.
The Sagebrush has been subject to the same forces that have been pummeling the rest of the news media for almost two decades now. The recession that began in late 2007 weakened businesses, decreasing ad revenue. Around the same time, print advertising decreased due to cheaper digital offerings; classified advertising just about went extinct; and paid print subscriptions dropped. Around one-third of the nation’s newspapers have closed in the last two decades, and the trend is accelerating.
The pandemic made matters much worse.
“COVID was awful on the budget,” Koeckes said during a phone interview. “There were hardly any ad dollars in 2020.”
The Sagebrush’s operating expenses are about $24,000 to $29,000 per year, she said. Most of that goes toward staffing, with a small percentage going to tech expenses and occasional equipment purchases.
Before the 2007 recession, annual revenue from advertising was in the low-$100,000s, enough to operate and put some funds in reserve. Today, ad revenue is a mere fraction of that, and has gone as low as $7,000 in recent years.
Koeckes, who has been a UNR staffer for 20 years, is effectively the keeper of long-term institutional knowledge regarding the Sagebrush. Over the years, she has always advised the paper’s leaders to save any excess revenue for a rainy day, which they largely have done.
“They had been very fiscally responsible from year to year,” she said.
The news that Drewes learned from Koeckes in April 2022 was that there was just $72,000 left in the coffers—a figure that will dwindle to nothing within several years without action. Today, about $61,000 is left. To survive, the Sagebrush will need a new revenue model.
Most professional news outlets are dealing with the same problems. The RN&R, for one, is in the process of transitioning to a nonprofit model in an effort to remain sustainable. Other news outlets have put up paywalls, solicited donations from corporations and charitable foundations, and applied for grants. The news industry is also now weighing the pros and cons of various forms of government funding, though there is a general sense of unease about the strings that would likely be attached to it.
The Sagebrush staff wasn’t initially sure which funding avenue to pursue, but they knew one thing for sure: They were determined to avoid a model dependent on funds from UNR’s student government.
Full disclosure: I am not a neutral observer here. I sit on UNR’s Student Media Advisory Board. While I have not played a role in the events this story is about to cover, I’ve known about them. Also: Sogand Tabatabaei—who is not mentioned in this article, but is UNR’s coordinator of student publications and marketing, and has advised the Sagebrush team on the events that follow—is a board member of Double Scoop, another publication of which I am the editor.
Editorial independence—at a price
Back in 2008, the editor of the Sagebrush was Brian Duggan. He went on to put in 11 years at the Reno Gazette-Journal, three of them as executive editor. He is now the general manager of KUNR Public Radio.
When Duggan first took the Sagebrush post, advertising revenue was strong. The paper also received a subsidy of around $20,000 annually from the Associated Students of the University of Nevada—UNR’s student government, commonly referred to as ASUN.
Under his administration, the Sagebrush discontinued its financial relationship with ASUN. The reason: financial independence means editorial independence.
“The student senate had control over who was editors; they had the votes,” Duggan said. “We wanted the next editors to be people who were already working up through the Sagebrush. We didn’t want people just to come in without any experience whatsoever to take over the paper.”
During the selection process for the two editors preceding Duggan, some members of the student senate “were coming from an explicit, partisan, ideological position,” Duggan said.
“It wasn’t about partisan (matters) or politics,” Duggan clarified. “It was about people coming up through the culture at the Sagebrush and then earning that spot. We wanted to make sure that the next editor always had experience. Kids start when they’re a freshman or sophomore, and they start as an assistant editor, then they become the section editor, and then by the time they’re a senior, they’re ready to become the managing editor or the editor in chief. … We were very protective of the paper. We didn’t want to cede leadership of the paper to an interloper, so to speak.”
Patrick File, who teaches media law at UNR’s Reynolds School of Journalism, said there have long been tensions between student media and student government—not just at UNR, but everywhere.
“If part of what journalism is meant to do is hold the powerful accountable, then part of what student journalism is meant to do is hold powerful people at universities and colleges accountable,” File said during a phone interview. “It’s a challenging position to be in, because, as in any academic setting, you’re a subject of the administration—and thus subject to their rules and the consequences of criticizing them—while at the exact same time trying to be somebody who speaks truth to that power.”
A few days later, I asked File what happens in places where governments control the press. He answered by email: “No free press equals no participatory democracy. It’s as simple as that. Press freedom guarantees we can have a reliable and independent system to inform and engage the public and hold powerful people and institutions accountable. These are the things that make democracy work, in every community of any size, and where they are absent, you can see it in every aspect of people’s daily lives. In countries without a truly independent and free press, even ones that call themselves democratic because they have elections, there is no way to tell what is and what isn’t propaganda from the people in power.”
A pressing decision
For Emerson Drewes and the Sagebrush staff, that April 2022 news that the paper’s future was in peril brought forth a combination of panic and action.
“I was, like, flipping out,” said Drewes. “So I had a bunch of meetings with a bunch of different alumni.”
A alumni committee was formed; you might recognize some of the names from the local media, including Duggan, File, former RGJ reporter Mike Higdon, and Elizabeth “E” Thompson, then an editor for The Nevada Independent.
Madeline Purdue, who had been the Sagebrush’s editor in chief a few years prior, proposed a funding model that sounded like it might work—a per-credit fee that all UNR students would pay, along with tuition, at the beginning of each semester.
Later that spring, when some ASUN senators proposed slashing funding for Brushfire—the 76-year-old, student-run arts and literary journal—Sagebrush staff banded together with that publication, as well as two other student-run media organizations, Wolf Pack Radio and Insight Magazine, UNR’s lifestyle and culture journal. Together, they would lobby for a per-credit fee to ensure their longevity and independence.
“We came up with the first number, which is 67 cents per credit,” said Drewes. UNR’s minimum full-time course load is 12 credits, and many students take 15, which would put a student media fee at approximately $8 to $10 per student, per semester.
The student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, The Scarlet & Gray Free Press, also sought a per-credit fee in 2022. That December, the Board of Regents for the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) approved it.
While the Scarlett & Gray staff petitioned the NSHE directly, the Sagebrush staff decided to seek approval from the student body first. Drewes reasoned that since the Sagebrush includes student voices in its news coverage, it should be asking for students’ voices as part of its funding restructuring, too. Before reaching the NSHE, the measure would need to pass two rounds of voting—first the student senate, then the student body.
In March 2023, UNR’s student senate approved the measure unanimously. However, while the student body voted 58 percent in favor of the fee, that was not enough: Two-thirds of the vote was required.
“We still got a majority,” said Drewes. “And that gave us a good precedent to go again (this) year. … We just needed to educate the students more. We barely put out any marketing (in 2023). … We went back to the drawing board.”
Drewes advised the incoming directors of the Brushfire, Wolf Pack Radio and Insight to spend time campaigning for the student media fee in addition to learning how to run their respective media outlets.
The leaders of each of the outlets took a closer look at their budgets and determined that the 67 cents they’d proposed in 2023 would not be sufficient to staff all four outlets. For the 2024 vote, they campaigned for a per-credit fee of $1.29, which would amount to a per-semester fee of about $15 to $20. They knew this would be a harder sell.
“Students see dollar signs, and they don’t want to pass it,” said Drewes. “I can’t say I blame them.”
Part of the reason for the increase was to bump up student journalists’ wages. They shoulder the same challenges that professional journalists do: As revenue has decreased, workloads have largely increased. Burnout is common; it’s difficult to count the number of skilled, local journalists who have left news for jobs in PR and other fields, simply so they can feed their families.
One of the alarming results is that journalism careers have become, to a significant degree, available only to people who can afford to have them. Many local journalists, myself included, would not be able to pull it off without some form of subsidy from family members or additional jobs. The same goes for the Sagebrush staff.
“A majority of the people here work two to three jobs,” Drewes said. “Jaedyn (Young, the news editor), I believe, works, like, four jobs. Some other people work three jobs.” Drewes counts herself “super lucky” because she has gotten scholarships and only has to work one job. (Another disclosure: In the fall of 2022, Jaedyn Young was a paid intern for Double Scoop, and she’s done freelancing for the RN&R.)
A second election season
In December 2023, after a mixture of student support and opposition, the student senate added the $1.29-per-credit fee measure to the spring 2024 ballot.
“From there, we did a huge marketing push,” said Drewes. She admits she may have missed some of what her professors were discussing, because she was occupied with designing election graphics during class.
Her staff tried to drum up support with posts on social media, in the Sagebrush newsletter and on their website. They passed out stickers with a cartoon wolf—a take on UNR’s mascot—reading a newspaper that says, “Vote ‘yes’ on Question 1.”
Unfortunately, that marketing push was not enough. In March 2024, students overwhelmingly rejected the student-media fee: Just 41.7 percent voted yes.
“We’re just back to the drawing board now,” said Drewes.
Charting a new course
At the end of the spring semester, the Sagebrush staff will see another changing of the guard. Drewes is graduating and plans to move to Washington to work for the Seattle Times as a business reporting intern. Derek Raridon, now sports editor, will be her successor. At 21, Raridon already has six years of student reporting under his belt—three at Spring Valley High School in Las Vegas, and three at the Sagebrush.
“Journalism is … known to be the watchdog,” Raridon said. “It holds governments accountable. Journalism is a facet for change as well.”
He also values journalism’s role as a conduit for positive news, like spreading the word about community efforts and the accomplishments of local athletes.
He’s not certain what the game plan for securing the Sagebrush’s future will look like, but he still sees a per-credit fee as a likely end goal.
He’ll be balancing his job as the Sagebrush editor and the mission to save student media with a full-time course load and a teaching commitment. (This semester, he’s teaching pre-calculus.) He said the workload is intimidating, but he cares enough about the job—and the future of journalism—to take it on.
“I’m ready to tackle whatever, to make sure that we’re able to be on campus longer than just a few more years,” he said.